


twinganes

by kitsune13tamlin



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Meta, Metafiction, don't expect it to make a great deal of coherent story line sense, transferred here in case tumblr goes bottom up, twinganes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 20:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 40,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16960779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitsune13tamlin/pseuds/kitsune13tamlin
Summary: just some meta and headcanon I've collected in the 'what if Shiro had a twin brother back on Earth' version.  Fits with all my twingane fic like Rocket Man and Two Minutes.





	1. Ryou and Twin Differences

**Author's Note:**

> so [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ) did some beautiful pictures that involved the 'what if Shiro had a twin named Ryou who was a mechanic' and my brain would not let the idea go so I kind of took it and expanded. Some of it got made into fic, some of it got made into meta. This if the spot for the meta.

_anonymous  asked:_

_(Ran this by panickypaladin earlier and they said to ask you. In short, the Twinganes hide their insecurities through either looking calm((Shiro)) or being upbeat/sarcastic about it((Ryou)). In addition to his upbeat sarcasm, Ryou, when really pissy, is just silent. And if you get him to talk, it's pure venom((as you put it, Ryou doesn't take shit)). Just wanted to know your thoughts!)_

hey nonnie!  I _did_ see you and [@panickypaladin](https://tmblr.co/ml7BOJZ8vgMoQ_zZ8xwmPRA) talking about things (they were kind enough to tag me which was very thoughtful considering I follow them anyway but my dash is a wreck and my sleep/wake schedule doesn’t always gel with everyone else’s).  I’m sorry I didn’t answer then but I was stuck deep in Ryou’s last chapter and I am terrible about dropping stuff if I don’t follow the thread of it all the way to the end once it gets rolling for me.  I thought you were both bring up some really interesting points and I’m curious too about the princess because I didn’t even think about it but she DOES pilot the ship with basically just herself as the ignition and Ryou might be both fascinated and a little worried for her once he gets the real jist of it.

BUT back to your points - good speculation and I’ve got to admit, I haven’t written for Ryou very long so there are large parts of him, at least my version of him, that I haven’t explored yet.  I hesitate to get too far ahead in my speculation because I utterly abhor the ‘twins are exact opposites’ troupe and yet Ryou and Taka are not going to be the same in personality inflections at all either if the way Ryou writes for me is any indication.  Things I’ve noticed as I’ve written for him.

Ryou feels things intensely.  This isn’t to say that Taka doesn’t as well, just that Taka tends to recognize, and control, his intense feelings while Ryou tends to recognize and ride his.  Ryou is much more willing to let what he’s feeling swallow him, to - most importantly - _chose_ to let it swallow him while Takashi tends to use that energy but funnel and control it instead.  They both understand the power that comes with that intensity of emotion - happiness, anger, fear, frustration, giddiness - but Ryou is much more willing to throw himself into the waves of it to carry him and Taka is more likely to find a way to harness it for control.  In a way I think this carries over in little ways through their daily lives.  I think Ryou - and mind you, I’m just talking about mine and even mine is completely open to interpretation and different views - is naturally more laid back and relaxed than Taka.  They’re both easy going, they’re both devoted to whatever they’re doing, they’re both hyper aware of what they’re feeling and they both chose when to let it out and when to bottle it up - but Ryou seem more the type to laugh easier, snap out a smart ass answer, hug someone or mess with them than Taka.  Mind you, not excessively.  They were both raised in the same strict household with the same cultural standards about personal space and appropriate behavior and Ryou’s never rebelled against that but - Taka is more the teacher that says ‘I’ll walk you through how to do this thing step by step and I’ll be at your side the whole time’ and Ryou is more likely to show up yell ‘grab your safety goggles and come with me!  I’ve found an old trash pile that needs to be blown up!’.  They’re both positive forces, they both go out of their way to support others and lift them up to higher levels, they both are deeply aware of and try to hide their own personal weakness (except from each other) and they’re both always going to put their friends and family first despite understanding the bigger picture.  Ryou is just going to be a bit more relaxed and smile more often and crack jokes (that aren’t morbid, though sometimes they are) than Takashi.

Except when he’s in the zone.  Don’t approach when he’s in the Zone.  There’s nothing relaxed or casual about that at all and he snarls fast, teeth bared and all, if he’s interrupted when he’s hyper-focused like that.  Hunk would need to warn Lance off that first time Ryou went Zone.  Ryou wouldn’t hurt a fly - but he sure makes it sound like he’s going to do swift silent very violent murder when he’s interrupted and not allowed to get back into the Zone until he’s managed to unfocus that mindset.

And I think you’re utterly right about Ryou when he’s pissed.  Because Ryou doesn’t get pissed often at all.  He lets most things water off a duck’s back.  He knows who he is and he’s got his own goals and own life and own assurances.  But when he gets pissed, going silent is him being kind and considerate.  You’re completely spot on that if he does open his mouth what comes out is some of the more venomous, and accurately biting, words with eyes to match them.  He and Taka have always been _very_ careful not to talk the extremely rare times Ryou gets pissed.

 

 


	2. Ryou and Romance

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_So I'm reading some Uliro fics right? And I was thinking "yo what if Ryou had a Galra crush that'd be super interesting" and it evolved into "Ryou is trying to a woo a Blade of Marmora who seems both interested and completely indifferent to his advances, and Taka has gone full big bro mode."_

 

okay, I’ve got to be upfront here and admit that my VLD inhouse ships are pretty rare and I’m very mild on the few that do interest me.  I haven’t paid attention to the Uliro pairing and I have, until this point, given no thought at all to Ryou in relation to the Mamorites.  So this is all just kind of going to shape itself as I write (which means, it may not be very coherent or be in logical order). Head’s up warning on that.

So!  Let’s get down to it and  talk Ryou’s romance life!

First I think it would be interesting to deal with Ryou’s attitude toward Galra as a whole.  He does hold grudges longer than his brother and while he is very aware that the Mamorites, and the Galra as a race, aren’t responsible for the actions of some of their kinds, these are the creatures that _hurt_ his brother.  That spent _a year_ hurting his brother.  And while his head looks at them and tells him these specific ones didn’t, and one of them in fact rescued his brother, his eyes look at those hands and imagines them pinning his brother to a table, holding his brother down in a cell, forcing his brother down while terrible things are done to him.  Ryou wakes up to Taka screaming at night.  He sees the complete abject terror in his brother’s eyes during those times, the pain, the vulnerability.  With his head, he tries to judge every being he runs across by their actions and in his day to day, he’s very good at that.  Humanity has a long record of being awful to each other and yet Ryou knows you judge each human by their actions alone and he is pretty good at doing that for other species.  If it was just him the Galra had messed with chances are very high he’d let it go and not have to sometimes remind himself to look at them as individuals.  But - they _hurt_ _**his** brother_.  It’s something he’s going to have to work on getting past.  The twins can forgive pain they endure themselves, its harder when its pain their twin had to endure.  And Taka’s the more forgiving of the two.  I think Ryou could work and work well with the Marmorites, or any other unaffiliated Galra for that matter.  Throwing brain ideas around breaks down all kinds of barriers quickly for him and so does a shared love of mechanics.  But Ryou’s always loved machines quickly and people perhaps a little bit slower and if he did fall for a Blade or any Galra, it would probably be a long process he wasn’t aware of for most of that started with shared interests and theory sharing and developed into friendship that he started to miss when it wasn’t available.  Ryou realizing he was in love, especially with a Galra, would probably take him getting hit with a ‘coming to Jesus’ moment as we call it in the South, that sudden 60 mile an hour head first smack into a wall that woke him up in a split second as everything suddenly went crystal clear and ‘oh God, I’m in love…

_Fuck!’_

(frankly, falling in love with anyone, of any species, might be very much like that because Ryou is great with machines, and he’s pretty good with people too, but his focus just isn’t _there_ when it comes to romance.  The head on into a wall just might be gentler on him if it was with someone other than a Galra.)

Next we’ve got to go with Ryou’s idea of wooing, which is… subtle.  Let’s be kind to the dork and call it subtle.  I think I already talked about this a little a few headcanons ago but Ryou comes across to me as a provider.  It’s his nature to take care of functioning parts and that extends to living beings as well.  Find out what they need, find out what makes things easier for them, find out how to make their jobs and functions gentler and provide it.  IRL he’d be the friend that always seems to have a candy bar on hand for the friend with the blood sugar issue, the earphones with the sound of rain in his pocket for the friend that sometimes needs to shut out the world, the one that always seems to have sunblock on him and an endless supply of chapstick and super glue and rubberbands and bandaids in just the right size and several water bottles stashed around his workplace for friends.  He’s a little more snarky than his brother, he’s a little rougher with his affection but - Ryou takes care of machines because he loves them and he takes care of people for the same reason.  He may not be able to heal a friend’s broken heart at three in the morning (and he doesn’t have Taka’s way with Naruto speeches), but his door is open and he just happens to have a pint of their favorite ice cream in his freezer.  Ryou makes it a point to know what people need and to make sure he’s got it for when they realize they need it. And when he’s wooing someone - that just ratchets up to 12.  I think it would be hard to pick up on - except Taka of course would pick up on it right away because - wow, _his_ twin huh?  On the plus side for the poor sap Ryou was wooing without being obvious about - the upside is that the Shirogane seem very sincere and very forward and honest about their emotions regarding other people (not necessarily about themselves but Taka never seems to have any trouble showing others how he feels about them, good or bad, pretty damn quickly and I suspect Ryou is even less diplomatic). 

Now we hit the ‘completely indifferent to his advances’ part and I think that’s got to be a deal breaker.  Oblivious is one thing but indifferent implies ‘unresponsive, apathetic, disinterested, uninvolved’ and - got to tell you - I don’t see either of the Shirogane brothers pursuing someone that doesn’t seem interested.  Sure, their emotions aren’t going to just turn off but not interested is not interested and the twins don’t seem the type to either play emotional games or respond well to emotional games.  They’re both grown adult men with a hell of a lot of both life experience and current universe threatening issues on their plates and considering both of them prioritize ‘what needs to be done’ over ‘hey, my heart hurts’ there’s just not a lot of chance for anything to develop, especially in the middle of universe spanning crisis when there’s just not a lot of time for personal issues, with someone that wasn’t turning around and meeting them at least halfway.  I’m sure both of the twins dated and had relationships on Earth and I can see how anyone could view them both as super slick at it and suave but… to me, they’re both dorks.  Sweet dorks, caring dorks, thoughtful dorks but very driven dorks whose different fields of advancement took up _huge_ chunks of their time and concentration and who put in the time and heavy effort to get to the top of their fields through drive and determination and that didn’t leave a lot of time for serious relationships to develop, or if they did, it was probably someone in the same field or at least in the same area, and it probably started off as a friend, simply because that’s a lot of long lonely nights for someone that wasn’t in the trenches with them and wouldn’t understand, personally, how much ‘not them’ was important to that race to the top.  So, now, in space, fate of the universe on the line, I somehow just can’t imagine either of them, and Ryou in particular, going all out romantically over someone that wasn’t right there with him.  Possibly without realizing it on either or both their parts but certainly not with someone that didn’t reach back for him when he reached forward almost from the start.

And last point, and dang this got long, sorry about that, nonnie.  How would Taka react?  Wow. Well, making this up entirely and aware other people probably write Takashi differently, I speculate that the twins generally stay out of each other’s romantic lives.  I mean, sure - they’ll head’s up their brother if it seems like trouble is incoming but otherwise its a ‘you do you, I’ll be here if you need me’ kind of thing.  Chances are they don’t cry on each others shoulders or sigh and flutter at each other and the advice sharing is probably done with an almost theatrical casual approach and pretty minimal.  They’re twins, they move in the same circles, they like a lot of the same traits in someone - they’ve probably got some hard and fast unspoken rules about immediately backing off of anyone that seems interested in their twin or that their twin seems interested in.  They get their hackles up easily when someone hurts their twin, but just because someone hurt their twin doesn’t mean their twin won’t still be dating them tomorrow and its just generally easier all around to avoid those kinds of pitfalls.  Besides, neither of them really want to think about their twin and sex in the same thought.  Taka would support Ryou, he’d give advice - probably mostly on things that might help with the wooing - if asked, but otherwise, Ryou is a big boy who will make his own mistakes and Taka is much more likely to play the part of catcher and distraction if it falls through for Ryou than to get himself involved with the relationship itself.  He’ll warn if it looks like a Bad Ending kind of thing, but otherwise - Taka lets his team carry missions without him and relies on their abilities to get them through - he’d do the same for his brother. 

And he would **_never_** forget who broke it, if Ryou’s heart was ever shattered.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Knew I should of used a different word. It was somewhere between being 1000% done with Ryou's more theatrical shenanigans and finding his more subtle behavior objectively beneficial. The Uliro fanfic did bring up the possibility that Blades can't pursue romance if it can risk the mission and being woefully unfamiliar with how to deal with it, especially with a human, like in the fanfic, Ulaz took Lance's advance of "just tell him" and Shiro needed time to process it cuz "how do galra flirt"._

 

well, I hesitate to comment on anyone’s world building fics.  So much of what all of us are doing at this point is headcanoning like mad to fill in all the blank spaces still remaining in canon.  I may not support someone’s ideas (and have very few opinions on the Mamorites at all, support or otherwise) but everyone’s headcanons at this point are just as valid until canon throws wrenches into it.  So I’m going to kind of coast around and focus on Ryou here, or rather my idea of what he could be. 

I’m trying to think of what Ryou’s more theatrical shenanigans regarding romancing someone would be.  For the most part, especially at first, I seem him being very low key and it being very hard to separate his ‘taking care of you because I think I might be falling in love with you’ and ‘taking care of you because you matter and you’re doing a sucky job at it on your own’.  Honestly I’m not even sure Ryou can tell the difference, especially at first.  He was raised in a traditional culture and a great deal of his adolescence, especially his later adolescence and even early twenties revolved around cramming every free second he had with ‘take things apart, put them back together, be the very best’.  I imagine he must have dated from time to time, sometimes almost by accident, but its very hard to find someone that, after a long day of grubbing in the belly of an obsolete star ship engine from the early 2000s, you could crash against and excitedly talk about different grease consistencies for an hour or two - regularly.  He’s super hot and he’s got a very deep heart, he loves taking care of people and when he wants to, he can probably flirt and tease and joke and snark very attractively - BUT he also zones for hours or days on end when interruption isn’t welcome, he spaces out when he’s got a problem he’s working on mentally, he talks shop the second someone gives him an opportunity and he’s probably shit at remembering important dates, because, chances are, he doesn’t always realize what day it even is when he’s buried in his work.  Not ideal boyfriend material.  He’d either have to find someone else that was just as driven as he was so that when he was neglecting them, they were far too busy doing their own crazy intense training to mind or someone with the patience of a saint to put up with how single minded his focus can get on things that aren’t them and the fact grease doesn’t wash off sheets, Ryou, and this is the third pair this month and I’m just going to buy the Cheap My Little Pony knock off brands if you don’t stop this shit.

Which is my round-about way of saying, chances are high Ryou didn’t have many, if any, truly serious relationships once his Garrison training and then career track took off in his late teens and early twenties.  He can flirt and he cleans up well and he’s damn earnest and open when he admires someone but he doesn’t have a lot of practice or awareness about muting them when it comes to his more intense habits.

So, we’ve got Ryou - and we’ve got someone he’s just realized ‘holy shit! I think I might be in love with them!’ and I’ll make that general so it can cover anyone he might fall for.  And now he’s stuck trying to figure out how to get past the ‘ _no, no, THIS time I’m bringing you chocolate because I kind of like you, not because I know you like them so you’ll eat them and I’m worried about your blood sugar_ ’.  And - I think he’d kind of flounder there for a while.  I honestly don’t know how much help Taka would be either.  I mean, his twin reads people really well and he’s a provider and fixer of people like Ryou is for machines in his own way but I’m honestly not sure how much better at dating I’d headcanon Taka being.  Because he was right there, neck and neck with Ryou on the whole driven to succeed and becoming the best pilot in generations out of the Garrison and the poster golden boy and doing whatever heroics he did before he even got into the fight to be the pilot to Kerberos ie these boys lives have been _busy_.  I also think both of the twins would pause before just jumping in because _‘sure I want this, but is it what’s best for both the moment and the person I want it with?’_.  So you’ve got Ryou, hitting that ‘so what now?’ wall with a brother that’s probably going to give him the best advice right out of his heart but at the same time might not have that much _practical_ experience to offer and the fact that, currently, they’re in the middle of a life or death struggle against a galactic empire and there’s like, a dozen of them taking on said galactic empire and some scattered allies, so really the odds suck and is now really the time for this? 

Coming around full circle here, I don’t know that Ryou would do much theatrical at all about realizing he was in love.  I mean, I’m sure he’s going to come in and flop on his brother’s bed and make dolphin noises with his face pressed into a pillow but around other people, and the person he’s interested in, I don’t know what would show to be accepted or rejected.  He might make sure he’s always the one that ends up patching up their minor injuries, he might wait up for them if they’re off on missions just to be there when they came back, he might sit next to them just to let them talk or just be present, he would definitely make sure they were flying/driving the most souped up vehicle he could tinker and he would be the first one to have their back or their side in a fight, but I don’t know that anything would be obvious enough to become 1000% done with, unless it was his company and if that was the case then he’d know to back off and let it go.  Ryou isn’t going to pursue someone giving him ‘not interested’ or even ‘not now’ signals.  To his mind, there’s a war going on and its much more important that everyone’s comfortable functioning together without friction than whether he’s lost his heart or not.  He’s intelligent, and aware enough, to know when to swallow his emotions and focus on other things.  He’s a very sincere person, like his brother.  He’d take someone’s response to his overtures sincerely and at face value.  If he’s getting mixed signals, he’s going to trust the ‘no’ ones because you don’t pay attention to green ‘all clear’ lights on a mother board but you sure as hell pay attention to the ‘stop now’ red ones when they show up.  That said, I can also, if he’s sure of it, and he’s pretty sure they’re sure of it, see him committing entirely.  Which means an almost Han Solo casual ‘the red button is the self-destruct button.  Only push it if you’ve got a straight shot out because it’s only a twenty tick countdown and I love you and you need to not do the dying thing on me.  Now the _green_ button is the fun one - ‘

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_*pats table a little forcefully* part of that idea was how ryou would react to someone falling for him instead of the other way around, like, how quickly does he realize it and what would happen if he feels the same way or not, in general of course_

 

hm, nonnie, good questions.  Well, let’s speculate some (and I’m curious as to what other people headcanon as well).  First off, I think both of the twins have a certain amount of experience with people falling for them.  I mean - look at them!  Even if you don’t take their personalities into account, those are some seriously fine looking guys and while the alien universe is apparently blind to that fact considering no one ever hits on Taka, I’m pretty sure the human race at least was paying more attention.  I don’t know that it happened All the time and I don’t know how often it happened as opposed to how often the guys picked up on it, but at least some of the people interested in them had to have been obvious enough to get through their thick heads and their heavy layers of focus on Career and Goals and the like.  And I think it still takes them by surprise even now?  Not so much a ‘me?’ surprise as ‘wait - do we have free time to think like that right now?’.  Focusing on just Ryou in that aspect for the moment I think it would take him longer than usual to catch on if there was any level of subtly going on at all.  He’s observant but lets face it, the boy is duck paddling just as hard as he can to keep his head above the water and catch up to going from ‘Earth is it and I work with the most advanced tech there is’ to ‘I can’t count high enough to count all the aliens out there and people use some kind of physical/spiritual energy to transport enough space stations through portable wormholes’.  He, so much more than Taka, is dealing with the overwhelming nature of things because while Taka is a ‘this is the situation, how do I work with it’ personality, Ryou is very much a ‘this is the situation, how does it work’ kind of guy and its very much like getting throw in the middle of the ocean when all you’ve ever known are puddles.  If he were any less, and if he let himself slow down and really realize it - and he won’t because he’s felt the brush edge of it already - he’d absolutely fall apart at how overwhelming it all is and how very far behind he is.  Instead he’s adopted a ‘dive in or die’ kind of approach and is crash/cram coursing everything as hard and fast as he possibly can.

There’s not a lot of mental attention left over for something like nothing someone interested in him.  Not unless they hit him over the head with it.  Hard.

Which isn’t to say he wouldn’t be open to that kind of thing or even reciprocate.  Ryou is very much a caretaker and a social person even if he likes his social groups small and tight.  A lifetime with Taka has made him very emotionally receptive and quietly emotive and he’s very comfortable with touch, given and received, as well as that Shirogane tendency to be all in once he decides someone’s worth it.  It would just take him a while to realize, if they were being in the least bit subtle or playful or silly or causal or shy about it, that whoever was interested in him was serious and interested.  Friendship means so much to him and holds such an important place in his world that it would take him a while to realize they were ‘friends _and_ ’. 

Once he realized it though - well, that’s a good question and his first question would probably be ‘can I do this or would it be damaging to whoever it was that was interested in him’.  He knows he’s scrambling, they’re in the middle of a war, he’s also aware he’s gone some dark places thanks to his time in the Arena and he still hasn’t made peace with or come to terms with them (and unlike Taka he _does_ remember what he did and what he turned into, the boy used his bare hands for a great deal of it, after all).  Emotions can be contained or repressed and while Ryou’s no where near as good at it as his brother is, the awareness is still there.  If he finds himself reciprocating the feelings - _should_ he be reciprocating them?  I think he’d worry less about the appropriateness of the timing and more on how it could effect whoever he was feeling for.

Of course, by that time, especially if he didn’t realize how deep things were getting until they’d gotten very heart deep for him, he might not be that good about making that ‘should i/shouldn’t I?’ call.  Ryou’s got the logic and common sense, but he does lead with his heart more than his twin (and we already know Taka leads with his heart with alarming (wonderful) regularity). 

If Ryou _didn’t_ return the feelings though - oh, that’s awkward.  A visited planet is one thing but if they live on the ship with him - that’s a very small group and a very small space.  Of course Ryou’s first move would be to acknowledge the emotion, clear the air that its a very heart sweet sentiment and that he doesn’t belittle it but I think he’d be very straight-forward about things too.  Neither of the Shirogane seem the kind to be anything but up-front.  If his heart doesn’t tug him that way, he’d say so.  Kindly but straight up.  He’s a mechanic and he doesn’t deal in metaphors or soft phrases.  And then he’d give them their space and try to treat them like the friend he no doubt thought of them as, though perhaps a bit more gently than before.  I don’t know that anyone’s ever found a way to let someone else down in a way that doesn’t even up awkward and hurting for a while there at least but you try to make it as fast and easy and clean to heal as possible. 

Basically you’ve got two approaches with Ryou.  Wait until his head pops out of whatever pile of parts he’s burrowed into and then whack him as hard as you can over the head with a 2x4 yelling ‘I LIKE you, you dolt!’

or

Spoil him rotten in a dozen small, puttering, taking care of him ways while becoming heart friends with him and start slipping in snuggles whenever he’s sleepy or mellow and hugs when he’s triumphant and happy and wait for him to realize how much he misses those times you’re not there and he turns around automatically looking for you when he’s got something to share.

One is a lot faster than the other but the other makes for cuter story writing.  Either way, it wouldn’t hurt to keep the 2x4 handy.

 

So - not committing to shipping Ryou with anyone (because I love the idea but would feel hypocritical doing it on this only-crack-ship(less) blog), but to the nonnie that asked - how would the rest of the group react if Ryou started dating/seeing someone romantically?  I’m going to go in general here and then narrow it down.

Basically I don’t really see how it would really bother anyone, outside of a few.  For instance, I could see Allura being leery if he started dating a Galra.  After all, Blades or no, the last person she cared deeply about was betrayed by one and I’m sure she’d worry about seeing that happen to someone else she cared for.  If Ryou comes home with a seriously toothy carnivore type that keeps sniffing him and smacking its lips behind his back - the team miiiight show more concern than normal.  Ryou’s not really the type to forget everyone else exists just because he’s falling for someone so I can’t see it shaking up the team too much. But mostly I see everyone being fairly relaxed with who Ryou is dating.  Even Taka.  Sure, Ryou’s more impulsive than he is, but he’s also got a solid head on his shoulders and a fairly good gauge when it comes to reading people.  And more - he _wants_ his brother to be happy. They’re in the middle of a war and Taka’s more aware than most that tomorrow might not come.  If Ryou’s found someone that makes him happy, that eases the burden for him a little, that makes him laugh - Taka wants that for his twin.  He’ll do what he can to give his brother that time.

Now, what if Ryou gets involved with someone on the team (and I’m going to make ‘team’ super vague here because I am not a blog that’s going to have discourse so we’re talking Coran, Allura, even Slav counts in the ‘team’ sense)?  That - would cause a few more hangups.  And I think those would mostly be with Taka and Allura (if she wasn’t the one he was dating - or heck, possibly even if she _was_ the one he was dating).  I don’t think hangups would be along the lines of ‘don’t do it’ or ‘you can’t’ (unless it was Slav and then Taka might be a ‘you can’t’).  I think the hangups would be more - cautious.  Granted, Ryou is kind of on the outside of the inner circle so there’s a bit more leeway but - what happens if he and his partner get into a fight?  How hard is everyone going to have to work to keep from taking sides?  How hard is _Taka_ going to have to work to keep from automatically taking his brother’s side?  Especially if its something that breaks his twin’s heart.  What if Ryou and his partner break up?  They’re still stuck on the same ship together, no one’s moving out.  How will it effect the way the team works together?  Not just the two of them, Ryou and his ex, but the whole team because there are two people that mean the world to the team and they’re both hurting but they both hurt each other.  There’s a lot of worms in that can that has a high potential of being cracked open and this isn’t Earth coffee shop.  It’s war.  Not having your head in the game can get you killed.  It can get your _team_ killed.  I can’t imagine either Taka or Allura trying to stop something if it was developing with Ryou (though like I said, if it was with Allura, she might out of a sense of duty) but I can see both of them being concerned, and Taka at least, bringing those concerns to Ryou.  Though, honestly, Ryou’s an adult and insightful.  He would be aware of those pitfalls already.  So - to answer that question - I think most of the team would be fine with it, even tease Ryou a bit, but I think Allura and Taka would see the potential hurt ahead and - not be leery - but be aware.  So would Ryou though.  And I think he would think long and hard before he decided to take the risks and go for it anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryou,when dumped in a not-so-serious relationship: (probably singing "So What" full blast, maybe "I will Survive" if he knew it wasn't gonna last long,) Ryou, when dumped in a serious relationship: Hello darkness my old friend~ (later) ALONE AGAAAIIIN, NATURALLYYY~(later, between sobs) OH NO NOT I, I WILL SURVIVE! AS LONG AS I KNOW HOW TO LOVE I KNOW I'LL STAY ALIVE-(more later, quietly) I should've bought you flowers, and held your hand, Should've gave you all my hours, when I had the chance_

 

Okay, first off - my compete approval for ALL these songs and I like your taste in music, nonnie.

But second let’s talk seriously about Ryou for a moment.  We’ve talked about what would lure him in and how he’d act but we haven’t covered much about the other side.  So let’s get angsty for a bit here.

I’ve stated before that my take on the twins is that they’d had relationships but not many and fewer that were serious.  Busting your ass to get to the top takes up a lot of time, effort and energy and neither of the guys seem the type to hook up with someone just because they feel its expected.  I suspect its possible Ryou had more in the realm of dates and such just out of sheer availability.  Taka’s the space walker - missions outbound take months I’m sure and he’s out there more than he’s probably ground bound once things start rolling whereas Ryou is pretty much a stable boots on the ground - hence more dates just because he’s actually there.  He’s a friendly guy, he likes to have fun in his down time, he probably had a decent amount of casual dating situations.  But - he does have his hermit traits and his tendency to put everything (and everyone) on hold when he’s in the Zone and he’s in love and deeply committed to his work.  Not a lot of people are going to stick around for that kind of driven personality once the shine of the way he looks with messed up hair and a tight tank top on wears off.  So Ryou’s had his share of break ups, probably instigated his share of break ups as well.  And - I think he gets it.  The casual dating and the surface level relationships - those are surface.  He doesn’t really expect them to last.  He knows he’s difficult to handle and he knows that his career is difficult to handle.  He doesn’t really expect most of the light relationships to last. So when they don’t - yeah it hurts a little but that hurt is more something he was used to isn’t there anymore over something he had buried inside of him being pulled loose.  And he’s probably usually willing to shoulder the responsibility for why they ended too, even if the ending isn’t entirely his fault.  So I don’t know that he would do anything to ‘celebrate his freedom’ or anything because ‘nah, dude, he gets it’ and he doesn’t want to hurt anyone he shared time with.  Let it go and keep moving.  He might even nudge friends in that direction if he thinks they’d be a better match.  More than willing to talk about it and why its pretty much his fault it didn’t work out.

Serious relationships though?  Oh, he takes those right down to the core of his heart.  Ryou doesn’t just fall, he goes in with his eyes open and if he decides to take that leap, he’s going all the way to the very bottom.  Those are the kinds of relationships he’ll actually try to change for, try to include his partner in what he’s doing, try to remember to put down the wrench and listen, try not to forget he hasn’t been home in a week and a half because he’s in the belly of an engine and he’s lost track of time and hasn’t thought to even call.  Granted, a lot of that is built into him but damn it, for the right partner he’d at least try to be aware of their needs enough to come up for air for them.  And if that falls apart - well - that’s still his fault but this time it hurts.  Because he knows he didn’t do enough and he knows he wasn’t enough and he wanted to be.  Maybe in five or ten years he would be.  But he isn’t currently and of course they need more.  And that?  Ryou shuts that down entirely.  He doesn’t talk about it, he doesn’t bring it up, he doesn’t stick to the subject if someone else does.  He doesn’t acknowledge that it hurts or that its happened at all.  There’s no music, there’s no tears, there’s no anything.  He just takes it, absorbs it - and keeps going.  Because there’s nothing else to do.  But he buries himself even more in his machines and there’s not a lot of singing or crooning to them for a very long time after.  Ryou very rarely goes in - but when he does he’s all in and he’s in for the long haul.

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_pfff imagine ryou just casually tying knots in cherry stems, has a little pile stacked up, and someone walk just as he finishes one. their face goes bright fucking red as they speed walk away, aND OF COURSE RYOU NOTICES AND HE'S JUST SITTING THERE LIKE "wha-? what di-?? uh???"_

 

This makes me laugh.  Especially since I’m pretty sure Ryou picked up the ‘tying cherry stems with his tongue’ as a party trick and to help break the ice and has very little awareness its meant to be anything else.  In fact, I like to imagine that Ryou knows how to turn on the smolder when he wants to but most of the time, his sexiest habits and traits are ones he’s not even aware of as being that way.  Which - is probably why they are but also because so many of them are things he either takes for granted or does as a matter of course.  Hot, sweaty, smudges of dirt and grease with disheveled hair and very little on in the way of a shirt?  well - he’s working.  This is what happens when he’s working.  Why are you stealing his overshirt?  Bedroom eyes?  Well, he’s tired and you’re pretty and he’s not aware he’s ten yard staring you, just that its nice.  Eyebrow wiggles?  Oh, those are entirely intentional and he may be joking.  Or not.

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_as much as i love our little mech boy, and would want your return to be a happy one, shit brain decides to pile more on angst. digging up the "ryou and relationships" thing, shit brain decided to add "what if one of ryou's partners cheated on him". for a second i thought he would be "oh... okay then" but then it spiraled into "it was his first serious relationship". thank you shit brain, for making our boy cry._

welp.  Let’s dive right back into it with some angst.  First off, ow.  And second - what person in their right mind would cheat on Ryou?  Well, obviously someone that didn’t feel they were getting the level of attention they needed and given Ryou’s tendency to disappear into his work for days on end, that wouldn’t be too hard to imagine.  Perhaps someone that didn’t feel they were ‘mean’ enough to break up with him when his face lit up like sunshine every time he saw them but weren’t willing to stay faithful to a guy that wasn’t always there for them.  Anyway, sure, lets figure if Ryou’s partner cheated on him he’d be devastated.  Considering the amount of heart he puts into all his serious relationships (friendships included) its not hard to imagine that someone cheating on him would be an extra level of hurt far beyond simply breaking up with him.  That said, I don’t think there would be any second chances.  Ryou knows his flaws and he’d probably be very understanding, perhaps in a self-damaging way, about why someone would find him ‘not enough’ and go looking for affection elsewhere but once his trust is broke, I don’t think it would come back.  There wouldn’t be any ‘second chances’ for either of them in Ryou’s book and certain not any hanging on after something like that.  Loyalty seems to be a pretty strong Shirogane trait and it runs deep in both the twins.  (and in an entirely different and more basic level - if its a sexual relationship, his partner has now risked Ryou’s own physical health as well by exposing him to whatever their other partners might have had without his awareness of it but that’s a different facet of the betrayal).  Anyway, yeah, Ryou could accept that he wasn’t enough for someone but the cheating would be a double blow, first that they cheated but second that they hadn’t just been honest with him in the first place and said he wasn’t giving them enough of whatever it was they went looking for in someone else.  He’d be hurt, he’d get privately mad about it when he was alone, he’d take most of the blame for not being enough on himself, he’d disappear even more into his projects and withdraw for a time to nurse his wounds and heal in private with only Taka really welcome - but its a Shirogane trait to take the blow and keep going.  I can’t imagine Ryou would cry and if he did it would be fast and stormy and quickly over, more frustration than anything.  Takashi’s not a cryer in canon, we never really see him with even tears in his eyes despite what he’s carrying and I think the ‘repress and keep going’ seems like it could be a family trait.  You take the hit, you feel the pain - and then you get up and you keep going.  I don’t think either of the twins, or perhaps the entire family, is the kind that stays for long in their misery without looking for handholds to haul themselves bodily out of it.  Shiro is obviously devastated in canon when Allura sacrifices herself for him in season one - and he takes exactly one shuttle ride until pick up by the Green Lion and a walk down a short hallway to the back of Pidge’s chair to dwell on it before he’s fighting to find pieces he can pull together and do something productive over.  It’s not that they don’t feel, and feel deeply, its just that their reaction to getting hit and hurt seems to be to buckle down and keep going.  I think some of fandom misses that you can be carrying a deep wound - and yet still be productive and moving forward.  It doesn’t mean the wound isn’t there, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt - it just means you keep going despite it.  That’s part of Taka’s strength and I like to think its something his twin shares.  Take the time, feel the hurt, absorb what you can - and then knuckle down and keep going.  And intimate, emotional, personal hurt like a cheating partner would be deeper and require a bit more quiet time to absorb enough to function - but Ryou’s a Shirogane.  They don’t seem to know how to give up.  (Step aside - yes.  We watching Taka (or Kuron) do that with Black and Keith. But that’s because its a what he sees as a personal choice to exclude him and he respects their right to do so).  But give up?  No.  Taka won’t and Ryou wouldn’t.  He’d just need some time to lick his wounds and he’d pretend he was better a long time before he really was.  And it would be a very, _very_ long time before he would date anyone again much less get more intimately involved.

 


	3. Ryou and the Team

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_"Ryou is merciless to Keith" ....If he's a dick before knowing Keith is part Galra, what happens when someone casually slips that the little brooding emo is basically part "enemy"?_

 

You know, I wondered when I wrote that if anyone was going to pick up on it.  Good eye, nonnie! 

All right, so let’s talk Ryou and Keith.  Because they both want top spot with Taka and I think, as competitive and honest emotion as they both are, its natural that they must jostle each other from time to time.  So, all his life, Ryou’s always been secure in his top spot with Taka.  He knows that, if he needs it, Taka will drop everything for him.  He doesn’t call it in often - but its still a warm, fuzzy spot deep in his heart.  And then this kid shows up and its not as if its the first time Taka’s taken an underclassmen or hurting kid under his wing because - well, it’s Taka and that’s pretty much what he does but this one is different.  This kid _limpets_ to Taka and suddenly every time Ryou is dragging himself out of his classes and training to crash with his brother, there’s this kid already there.  A kid who doesn’t back off and give Ryou what he considers his rightful spot.  I’m not a shipper but even on a friendship/mentor level the way I see Taka and Keith, there‘s no doubt at all that the bond between the two of them is very strong and that it goes both ways.  And especially as its first developing, Ryou is going to, naturally, hit moments when his twin is talking about/worrying about/helping out someone else.  I think it would be impossible for both Keith and Ryou not to butt heads and honestly be jealous of what each other have with Taka.  And, honestly, there’s not much Taka can do about that beyond trying to stay balanced.  It’s really something that Ryou and Keith have to sort out between the two of them.  Especially at first, I think there was a lot of sniping that went on behind Taka’s back and I’ve got to say, sure he’s the older and more mature one, but I’m going to bet Ryou was the snippier of the two.  Because Keith - isn’t the best with knowing what to say or reading people and Ryou - Ryou is Taka’s brother.  Just because he works with machines doesn’t mean he’s not much more socially aware and good with knowing the right word for the right twist.  I would like to think that a part of him held back - because, again, he _is_ Taka’s brother and I think both of the boys were raised to be aware that their actions have consequences and the strong protect the weak.  Ryou can’t, in good conscious, run over Keith to the extend he could once he’s sussed out his weaknesses.  Utterly destroying someone goes against his grain and - Taka cares about Keith.  That kind of thing puts a high value on anything for Ryou as well.  But I can’t pretend he didn’t snap back just as fierce and twice as vicious and I can’t pretend that sometimes he didn’t go out of his way to make things difficult when he knew Taka wouldn’t catch him.

But then

Because there’s always a ‘but then’ and I can’t imagine a Shirogane being comfortable being cold or cruel for long before it started to eat at them - but then something happened.  Keith failed a simulation, Ryou ran across someone else picking on him, parent-teacher night rolled around and no one showed up for the kid, he got stuck at a bust stop fifty miles out of town and Taka was on a training mission and Ryou was answering his phone.  Something.  Something that  triggered in Ryou.  Something that made him recognize what an ass he was being.  Something that showed him how hard the kid was trying against the odds.  Something - that honestly _showed_ him why Taka was fighting _so damn hard_ for this one’s future.  And Ryou looks at this scrawny, spit and fire, arms and legs and not much more fourteen year old _kid_ and - he gets it.  He gets it.  And he feels like shit.

Things don’t go hunky dory after that.  Keith’s still ready to fight, because he’s the kitten that’s been poked too many times and he’s not expecting anything else.  And he still takes up more room in Taka’s schedule than Ryou is used to having to share.  Ryou isn’t going to apologize and sometimes - the kid still manages to get under his skin but - he gets it.  He sees where Keith’s missing a part, he sees where the kid had to cobble things together for himself because no one started him off right to begin, he sees just how much extra fuel Keith has to pour into everything just to get the things done that he needs to do.  He sees how gunked up Keith’s ‘engine’ is.  Ryou isn’t Taka.  He’s not even going to pretend.  But he’s got a fixer nature too and Keith is fighting the hardest he’s seen anyone fight for a place in life for a long time.  Where he can help, he will.  And it starts off by kind of adopting the gawky, spitfire kid into his family.  He’s not the gentle, encouraging older brother that Taka is - he’s the asshole brother.  But he’s the asshole brother that will stay up late and give up his sleep to work on your speeder because its making a noise he doesn’t like..  he’s the asshole brother that will make sure you’re eating by throwing breakfast bars and water packets at your head.  He’s the asshole brother that will rein down fire and cold hard fury on anyone that dares pick on this kid he’s adopted. 

He’s the asshole brother that will soup up a unused simulation pod so you can practice maneuvers in it that you’re technically too young to be qualified for.

He’s the asshole brother at the back of the room who shows up for each and every award and merit Keith earns, no matter what he’s supposed to be working on instead and he’ll stand in for Taka as the missions start to take him more and more away from Earth.  The first time Keith knocks on the door in the middle of the night because he can’t stand going back to his dorm room and finds out that Taka’s been called off planet on an emergency, it’s Ryou who lets him in and pops in a horrible B style sci-fi movie and doesn’t say anything other than ‘grab me a drink on your way over’.  They still scratch against each other from time to time but - its not that bad.  In fact, the scratching is kind of part of their relationship.

And then Taka goes missing, tallied down as dead on a moon so far away from Earth chances are they’ll never even be able to retrieve the body

and both of the boys are far too hurt to offer each other anything.

Finding out Keith’s been his brother’s right hand is going to be a relief and a little annoying for Ryou.  But - its still his adopted kid brother and he’s stood in for Ryou when Ryou didn’t even realize there was a spot.  They’ll have to work out a bit, bump around each other again a bit, resettle - but Taka needs them both because they’re the ones who realize the most how damaged he is and how much he needs support.  Keith has grown up some since, stabilized some since.  It’s easier to find a rhythm they can both fit into. Ryou can’t be as much of an asshole as he was before, the opportunities are less.  Them working together without having to talk about what they’re doing is happening more.  Ryou steps up on one side of Shiro and Keith is on the other more.  There’s a better balance.  Finding out Keith is Galra?  Not really an issue for Ryou.  I mean, of course, a surprise, a shock, a brief ‘I killed your kind in the Arena’ thought but - its still Keith.  Ryou might have a harder time if the kid looked Galra from a purely reactionary standpoint - his worst moments have been at Galra hands and there’s possibly still a bit of a latent physical kneejerk reaction to that but Keith… just looks like Keith.  Like he’s always looked.  Still acts like he’s always acted.  Ryou can hear that he’s Galra but his mind doesn’t _see_ Galra when he looks at the kid.  The engine parts are still the same, different brand name, same engine.  If Keith physically mutates to such an extent that he’s unrecognizable, Ryou would probably double take and have to readjust but, right now, he looks and he sees Keith.  That annoying little brother that will fight the stars for a spot in them and maybe Ryou tosses the juice packets these days at hand level instead of head level lobs.  He’s still going to ruffle Keith’s ‘fur’ for the fun of it, but only the way an older brother that’s watching you grow up and find out who you are would. 

And he’ll still, cold, calmly take apart anyone that messes with the kid.  That’s _his_ brother.  You don’t get to mess with Ryou’s family.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_I like to think that while Shiro has been teaching Keith wholesome lessons of life, Ryou's there telling him "now I'm not saying that you should murder him but I would totally help you get rid of the body"_

Ryou is completely that Bad Influence.  And, sadly, Keith knows better but sees little reason to not let himself be swayed.  He can always count on Taka believing him when he blames Ryou for it when they both get caught.  And - well, it’s not like Taka’s wrong.  Ryou’s okay with taking the fall, mostly because he wouldn’t suggest it if he wasn’t and also because it lets Keith get away with blowing off steam in a way he wouldn’t usually let himself because he’d worry about disappointing Taka too much.  Taka’s never disappointed with Ryou, only deeply exasperated sometimes so Ryou doesn’t mind ‘taking one for the team’ from time to time.  Besides - mischief and mayhem is more fun with a partner in crime and Keith’s really good at it once he commits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_would... would keith somehow feel responsible for what happened to ryou? like, he keeps thinking "if i just waited for him, he could have came with us and not go to space alone"? and, if he overheard ryou/was talking to him, would he retort with "you're noble too because it's my fault"? ditto for hunk? lance, not knowing what ryou was like before, trying to cheer ryou up? pidge reassuring him? shiro in the same boat as keith multiplied by infinity?_

I think everyone on the team has a healthy dose of ‘I’m responsible’ even when they’re not but I don’t know that it would get too overwhelming when it comes to Ryou. First off - if we’re going with my fics, Ryou _does_ in fact get a phone call after Keith’s rescued Shiro but its so far out of range he doesn’t hear anything but static.  So yeah, his brother did try to get a hold of him just about the second he woke up, but Keith’s out in the middle of BEONW with an outdated phone and it didn’t connect.  Intent was probably to try again once they were closer to town/towers but then Blue happened and things just steamrolled without a real chance to turn around or slow down after that.  I can’t imagine any of the team that went looking for the lion markings actually expected to find anything the first time out.  No one brought any gear except for Pidge who always seems to bring her gear.  Keith had been looking for something for months and only found cave drawings so I can’t imagine anyone on the team expected their first outing to result in finding a giant space lion that was going to hijack them to another part of the galaxy.  There was really no time, once the ball started rolling, for anyone to turn back around or wait for Ryou to catch up and while I think that probably killed Taka inside on a hard level.  But - I think both of the twins, and Keith as well, are very pragmatic minds when it comes to things.  And there really was no way to wait for Ryou.  _Ryou_ was supposed to stay safely put on Earth.  There was no way anyone could have anticipated him getting an inside call from the Garrison and stealing the Galra escape pod.  So I think there would be a certain amount of guilt over what happened to him after but I don’t think it would be the kind of thing Keith or Taka would ingest into themselves.  Because they would both know things were out of their hands and they’re both the types to have learned to roll with that feeling.  Which isn’t to say they wouldn’t hurt for what happened to him, but taking personal responsibility for it?  Everyone’s got enough guilt and pain over each other - that particular version wouldn’t have much sticking power.  If anyone on the team is holding anyone responsible for what happened to Ryou, it would be the Galra Empire and the slavers that caught and sold him (most of whom have already been dealt with lion style when Ryou was rescued).  The same way Ryou doesn’t hold himself responsible for what happened to Taka even though he’s the one that built the ship that took him into space where he was captured.

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryou is everyone's asshole brother. He would've gone for asshole uncle, brother to space dad, but Coran is space uncle and he doesn't want to fight Coran because of various reasons._

 

LOL!  No lie detected.  At first he buys Coran’s act but then, about a half day in Coran says something and smiles and Ryou automatically looks him in the eye when he does and - done.  He’s done.  He never says what he saw but damn is he suddenly left wondering if Alteans have more teeth than human mouths.  Still ends up adoring the guy but lets just say Ryou doesn’t even pretend he needs looking after when things get rough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Twingane(sorry but that sounds adorable?) Idea! How Ryou fits in team Voltron. Like, Lance can be Ryou's confidant(after Shiro himself) when they both express their uncertainty about their roles. Pidge can be a technical/mechanical rival first, little sister second. Hunk having to remind Ryou to not use spare castle parts for his shit because Altean tech doesn't grow on trees. Keith and Ryou angsting about the lost time together. Wow this got dark quick._

 

oh man!  I am LOVING these ideas for Ryou’s integration into Team Voltron. someone messaged me to jam about it too yesterday (apparently we ALL want Ryou to find his place among the stars).  You might get a kick out of it so I’m going to quote them.  “Coran would get over excited and want to explain EVERYTHING about the castle.Leading to countless “Back in my day!” stories!“  “Ryou built all the ships that Shiro flew the Kerberos ship included.He might not have the star status that Shiro has but think about how much Pidge and Hunk would fangirl about getting to meet Ryou!  Yeah Shiro is cool and all. BUT THIS GUY BUILT THE SHIP THAT WENT FURTHER THAN ANY HUMAN VESSEL EVER HAD BEFORE!! And he came here in a hobbled together ship that is half human, half galran and a whole lot of crazy!”  “Let Keith and Lance fawn over ShiroPidge and Hunk can take Ryou!“  “The other would just… leave the room when the three of them get going.Because the will not stop! They would build the craziest shit out of all the alien parts that they come across!”

It seems like a lot of us want Ryou to find ways to fit and for the team to fit him in.  And this makes me very, very happy. (even the dark parts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_How dare you forget about Lance, who is also a perfect little angel who knows how to take care of himself and reminds Ryou to stop being a fucking hypocrite about the "take of yourself" thing cuz between working and scurrying around with juice and snacks for everyone who's making sure Ryou himself is getting his share of nutritional goodness and sleep? Sure Allura is helping by sneaking him food and drinks but who's the foo dragging a grumpy scrawny mountain of a man to bed? Lance._

 

gasp of alarm!! What have we done!?  Oh dang, anon, good call.  We’re so busy looking at how much of the team doesn’t know self-care when it bites them on the ass, we forgot one of the rare ones that does!  Oh my goodness though!  Can we extend the ‘Taking Care of Ryou’ to included skin care and nail maintenance?  Because grease and engine oil must do a job on pores, don’t even get me started on his hands and nails (how to you get grease under your nails when _you’re wearing gloves!?_ ) and _someone_ needs to make sure those Shirogane twins keep their rugged good looks.  And yes, Lance can then drag his ass to bed and tuck him in because I imagine that in the amount of time it takes to let a face mask set and have his nails trimmed and buffed, Ryou’s gone from problems circling in his head to zenned out and sound asleep in no time.  We need art of this, we really do.  Ryou with his feet in a bucket of warm scented water, face mask on, strange alien sliced fruit over his eyes, head tipped back and zzzz’ing while Lance files his nails and fills him in on all the old gossip from his childhood (which Ryou remembers a surprisingly lot of the next time its ‘Nail Day’)

 

 

 

 

 

_[noisypaintersong](https://noisypaintersong.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_*gasp* I just had an idea! You know how Shiro basically adopted Keith? I just thought that Ryou and Hunk could end up with a similar relationship. Don't you think? He was Ryou's best student back at the garrison, and now that they work together more regularly their relationship just grows and suddenly Ryou understands his bro's relationship with Keith_

 

This. Awwwww.  Dang, I mean, who doesn’t love our sunshine boy Hunk?  I think we’d ALL adopt him given half the chance.  And here’s Ryou, struggling to take in all this new alien tech and struggling to simply wrap his head around all this new information about an entire galaxy of knowledge that’s suddenly opened up to him and yeah, also struggling to find his way and where he belongs in this new set up he finds himself in and there’s Hunk.  Being - Hunk.  Helpful and dorky and bad jokes and puns and steady and also familiar.  Oh thank God he’s _familiar_ in a universe of unfamiliar. 

lol, it might honestly be a question of which one adopts which.  But either way - yeah.  I think your idea is really lovely.  Because Ryou’s always been a bit clueless about Shiro’s need to adopt Keith and this?  This could be good for him on so many levels and some of them healing some old, deep places inside of him he’s just kind of accepted and ignored and glossed over until now. 

Tell me Hunk is going to crack so many bad puns about twins.  Because he’s our punster and I can’t believe he would miss that chance once he knows Taka and Ryou are okay.

 

 

 

[ ](https://headspacedad.tumblr.com/image/161932767142)

Okay, I want to start off with saying I don’t actually gel well with most fanon on this one because I honestly don’t see the Garrison, or Iverson by extension, as villains or even bad guys.  We’ve both pointed out in the past as an example that sedating Shiro in the contam unit only happened after he started to freak out and they noticed his very obvious ‘alien attachment’ and if this had been a horror movie and not a kid’s show, their actions in doing so would have been seen by the entire audience as the Smart Thing and Keith and crew busting Shiro out would have been the set up that led to the alien taking over the ship and starting its crawl through the air vents.  I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, its just not my current working theory about the Garrison.  And as [@radioactivesupersonic](https://tmblr.co/m2UafjHIDQaAMv1wZXc0l6A) also pointed out in their Very Good summary, Iverson calls Shiro by his nickname, meaning there’s enough of a relationship there for him to call Taka a name his friends call him, not by his last name ‘military style’ or even his full first name.  Until I get otherwise, I tend to go with the headcanon that Taka, and by extension Ryou, had comfortable working relationships and even friendships with people in positions of authority and responsibility at the Garrison.  Pidge was a very emotional thirteen/fourteen year old breaking into rightly restricted areas that were potentially highly military and hacking into personal computers, and, when caught, she frankly sounded like a conspiracy theorist.  Considering the kind of legal ramifications that she could have had thrown at her, getting locked out of the Garrison was pretty damn mild.

(I could go on a rant here about how ‘unmilitary’ the Garrison is and why I have a hard time, time after time, buying that they’re directly military instead of just associated but that’s a different rant)

Anyway, dragging myself back to point, I think Ryou, and Taka, would both understand where the Garrison is coming from and why they labeled it ‘pilot error’.  Clockie did a better summary of this so read theirs but the argument for me basically comes down to ‘what else would the Garrison announce?’  It is most likely a five month mission out to Kerberos and no one has ever been anywhere near that far.  Who knows how long a delay there is on communication, when the shit with the aliens went down the team was outside their ship and its recording devices, far enough away from the ship that they used a rover to get there and anything that was recording what was going down at the time was destroyed or captured by that Galra tractor beam.  The Garrison literally has, unless canon reveals otherwise, no logical way of knowing what happened out there and no logical way of finding out without at least another five month trip that they probably weren’t prepared to just launch immediately.

So - how long do you think the media would be willing to wait before they blew everything out into a conspiracy theory and ran nuts?  The Garrison has to announce something and since the Garrison is unaware of aliens, their number of logical choices for what went wrong are really limited.  Ship or pilot error.  And the ship had been sending back ‘all good’ reports at each check in.  Was the investigation ongoing?  Seemed to be.  Did they have to give the families and public something in the meantime?  Probably.  Did they throw Taka under the bust - maybe.  But its easier to clear his name later when they finish their investigation and blame it on the ship than come out and vilify it later when it turns out it wasn’t the ship.  I don’t think it would be a stretch for Taka to understand and accept.  He knows he can clear his name later, he’s got bigger fish to fry and because he never seems to put much stock on his ‘reputation’, especially when it clashes with who he knows he is (one of the reasons the Champion one bothers him so much is because he doesn’t remember so he can’t hold it against what he knows he was during that time and judge it right or wrong).

Now, let’s take all that into the Twingane verse we’ve collectively created.  I’m not saying Ryou isn’t pissed.  Of course he’d rather take the annihilation to his career that being the man in charge of a ship that failed and killed everyone so publicly would cause than have Taka take the ‘pilot error’ but it wasn’t his call, living needs outweighed dead ones, and frankly until someone actually got out there again, and who knows how long a prep time that would take to even launch a prob, who _could_ say what had gone wrong?  We all insist it couldn’t be Taka but - it could have.  Even the best people make mistakes.  I’d actually be more curious to see how the cadets disappearance was reported.  There’s footage of Lance helping break Taka out so is he considered ‘on the run’ and having criminal charges against him?  Are they still searching Earth for Keith, Taka and Lance like fugitives?  Did anyone in the pursuit vehicles that night recognize Hunk and, even smaller chance, Pidge in the escape vehicle?  There’s timing to tie the missing kids to the flying lion they saw the next day but not a scrap of physical evidence the two events are related unless they find Keith’s shack.  The Garrison could just report everyone’s dead in some accident but much more likely however many of the kids were recognized are wanted fugitives for helping ‘someone’(because that part I can believe they’d cover up initially) escape and their families, and the public, are aware of them in that aspect (and _fuck it!_ The Garrison just had a _HUGE alien ship_ show up out of nowhere on their radar in Earth’s very orbit (and while all the way out on Kerberos it could have been missed due to simple lack having enough things pointed in that direction and they may or may not have been picking up on the alien chatter Pidge was), there is **no way** a ship in Earth’s orbit was missed and the Garrison now really _desperately_ needs to get its hands back on Taka since he seems to be the only one that really knows what’s going on and those kids took off with him to God knows where and is he even still alive considering he hasn’t tried to check back in?  What if his alien arm killed him?  What if it killed the kids?  Finding these kids and calling them fugitives so the rest of the public can help seems so much more sensible than trying to cover up their disappearance with ‘deaths’.

Oh and Ryou took the alien escape pod in our verse so they don’t even have that anymore, just half a robot drone.

I think it would be safe to assume that, barring a Galra invasion, if Earth was just left on its own, when the paladins (and Ryou) get back to Earth, its going to be less middle finger, you lying liars that lie, and more the Garrison going ‘you all would be in huge trouble but we’ve got a third of a puzzle put together and we really need you to just jump in and fill us in on what’s going on so we can come up with some kind of defense plan if these aliens are trouble (which they are, and that part Taka did communicate before his jailbreak very clearly).

Pidge and Ryou bonding over lost relatives though… and lost to the Galra no less, is enough to break anyone’s heart and I think they’re both such private, self-protective people that that kind of vulnerability to someone they just met might not happen until Taka vanished at the end of season 2.  In which case it was Pidge that went looking for Ryou to offer her support and somehow that makes it, to me, even sweeter and terribly heart-wrenching too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_some evidence to singing throws-granola-bars-and-juice-boxes engineer teacher ryou: the fact that hunk, according to lance's comic narration, is "quick with a hug and a snack, good with a wrench and a song". just wanted that out there._

 

oh my!  How had no one mentioned this before?  Real canon evidence that Hunk’s been Ryou’s student long enough to pick up all his good habits and none of his bad (hopefully).  I LOVE it, nonnie!  Great observation.  New headcanon accepted!

 

 

_[noisypaintersong](https://noisypaintersong.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_So on the topic of Hunk and Ryou. My new h/c is that Hunk is legit the only one who won't get something thrown at him if he interrupts Ryou (even Shiro has to dodge a flying wrench sometimes) because normally Hunk's interruptions mean that either Ryou's gna get to help with a new awesome machine, or Hunk just wants to help Ryou, and Ryou enjoys Hunk's company._

Let’s be completely honest here - who in the entire universe could throw something at Living Personal Embodiment of Sunshine Hunk?  If Ryou ever accidentally did he’d probably get eaten alive with guilt.  Granted, Hunk is probably used to stuff flying around in the air around Ryou so he could pretty much just pluck it out of its throw before it did any damage but still.  No, Hunk can stay.  Hunk is Good.  Hunk doesn’t throw off Ryou’s Groove. Hunk adds Fun and Good Things to Ryou’s work area, himself included in that list. 

Hunk usually bring food.

 

 

[ ](https://headspacedad.tumblr.com/image/160987514712)

Okay, so I really want to do this justice.  Because I really hadn’t thought much about Allura and Ryou yet and this?  I love this.  There are so many reasons for Allura and Ryou to bond, not the least of which is they’re both stuck on the Castle while the others hop in their lions and doing their Voltron thing.  Which yes, Coran is too but Ryou and Allura are younger and probably have a closer mindset about things when it comes to battle than a more experienced Coran.  Granted, Ryou, until he’s allowed to tinker the Castle’s defenses has a lot less to do than Allura in a fight, the Castle is pretty much her lion (as [@radioactivesupersonic](https://tmblr.co/m2UafjHIDQaAMv1wZXc0l6A) has already pointed out) -

but that’s what really brings me to the intriguing part of Allura and Ryou’s interaction.  Because Allura is a part of the Castle.  A part of the machine.  She’s a working, integral, functioning machine part.  And she’s alive and human at the same time.  Ryou looks at that symbiosis - and he sees it differently than everyone else on the crew.  And that makes her, to Ryou, precious on the level that Magpie was special to him.  Ryou loves people - but he _cherishes_ intriguing machine parts.  And Allura is this unique mix of both.  And nonnie, I cannot think of anything more adorable than Ryou, awkward but determined and faking casual, deciding that someone needs to take better care of Allura.  And so there’s little stuff like juice and snacks in the middle of battle, and quiet Altean music in one of the lounges she tends to rest in and maybe a little Balmerian light catcher the mice bring her one day because its sparkly.  Ryou isn’t wooing - though who knows, he probably woos the same way - he’s caretaking and babying her the way he babys his machines.  And yet he has utter faith in her ability to hold up and her strength the same way he has utter faith in his machines and their strength.  Ryou sees her as completely mortal and human - and yet he also sees her, in a way, as part of a machine.  But it doesn’t make her ‘less’ - because Ryou has always seen machines as having souls of their own too.  And the same way he never mentions how he caretakes his machines but will praise and brag about them to high heaven - he’ll do the same for Allura.  And I think she needs that.  Her and Ryou are kind of on the outside of Team Voltron looking in and I think, as much as she loves Coran, having someone close to her age on her side of that line matters.

I would love to see her loosen up around Ryou the way she doesn’t, perhaps, feel she can around most of the paladins.  Not the same way she loosens up around Shiro but - I just love the idea of her starting off on the edge of the room, asking Ryou very basic utilitarian questions about what he’s working on - and then slowly over time she’s closer and asking more specific questions and then she’s over his shoulder doing ‘what’s that?‘ questions and then one day someone one the team needs her for something and they find her and Ryou both under a panel and when he pushes out she’s in an oversized pair of coveralls, hair piled up - and gleefully covered in grease from the bit of engine she’s been helping him take apart.  Coran is still the mechanic and he understands the Castle and all its quirks in ways Ryou never can but imagine the first time, instead of saying ‘Coran, can you fix this?’ Allura says ‘how can I help you fix this?’ to him.

And the turn around.  Allura sics the mice on Ryou as her spies, because, you’re perfect, nonnie.  Ryou takes care of everyone but himself and Shiro can’t watch out for him all the time on that.  And maybe he’s not the only one that starts bringing juice and snacks, just silently sliding them into his hand when he’s reaching for a tool blindly instead and, somehow, it doesn’t jar him out of his Groove - and yet he’s not as lean faced as he had been after a while.

Also ‘Grease Gremlin Muck Magnet’ should completely become my new tag for Ryou because it is perfect!


	4. Ryou and the Lions

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_so ya know how you talked about ryou gushing over black? what if black called the other lions over to her hangar and ryou starts gushing over all of them? giving them nicknames like "honeylicious" and "big boss", while the lions themselves gush over the strange little human that looks like the black paladin but is most definitely not the way he jumps and squeals?_

 

You know, I’m going to tangent here for a moment and really wish we could get a layout of some sort of the Castle.  I mean, its got to be HUGE and we get to see some of it - training room/s, mess hall, lounge, paladin dorms, Alura’s bedroom, engine room, ship’s bridge, med bay and vents but as a writer it would be very nice to know how close everything is and where it is in relationship.  For instance the paladins need zip lines and shuttles to get from the bridge to their lions but in the Space Mall episode, if I remember right, Shiro kind of strolls into Black’s bay after leaving the Bridge so just how far did the man have to hoof it if he wasn’t using a zip line?  

But back on subject - it would be really interesting to see how the lions act around someone that’s not their paladin and just how much they activate/interact wouldn’t it?  We see Red pretty much take off on Coran and Coran does address the lion as if he expects or would like to expect some kind of response but we pretty much, other than that and the Black and Zarkon interaction, don’t see the lions interacting or acknowledging anyone beyond their chosen paladin.  Obviously they can move on their own - Blue activates and, first lowers its shield and then its head and pops the ‘door’ open, and Black and Green show up pretty early on to shield their paladins from a meteor impact. Red is constantly leaping out into space to pick up its wayward, floating child.  But all those are in reaction to their own paladins.  How much mobility do the lions have on their own and how much of that mobility is based on their chosen paladin’s need?  I hesitate to put too much emphasis on the lions reactions to Ryou because, currently, we really don’t know how much they deign, or even can, interact with non-paladins.  Ryou is very like Taka and I suspect however the lions ‘read’ their paladins, he reads like Taka in several ways as well but he’s obviously not Taka and I don’t know how much the lions rely, or are even aware of, looks as opposed to the ‘feeling’ of someone.  Black I’m sure would pick up on the connect between its paladin and this other being immediately, it would feel it directly and very strongly, through its own paladin but I’m not sure how much looking like Taka would matter to Black.  I think if Black, or any of the lions, let him close or opened panels for him or what not, it would be a case of either 1. their own paladin being with him (think Hunk and Pidge in particular) wanting to show him things and the lion going along with it or 2. because they can sense Ryou’s nature to an extent and he treats them in a way they find acceptable and feel comfortable encouraging.  I think the first is the likely one, especially with Black and possibly Yellow and Green and I think the second would be something that he would earn, with patience and an awareness of and respect of their boundaries over time.  Obviously, if Black’s flashback memories are any indication, the lions once had a hoard of engineers and mechanics that worked on them at least to create/bring them about in the first place.  Ryou slowly, patiently, earning his place there isn’t I think too far fetched even if he’s not a paladin and would never share the paladin bond or intimacy.  But I suspect, and I’m guessing wildly and its about the lions more than Ryou, any closeness with them would be something that would take time and need to be earned without their chosen paladin present.

Which isn’t to say that Ryou wouldn’t, if it was possible, earn his spot with the lions and his own relationship with them if they allowed it.  Just that it might take some time and be a long running development.  Which now really bring up the question?  How would he find an acceptance from each other the lions?  Because you know it would be different for each other them.  And Ryou loves nothing more than finding out how something works so he’d keep trying until he found the right method. 

The day Yellow flops and rolls over for a chin scratch from Ryou and Hunk turns into a complete pile of mush over it is something I could live for lol.  Nonnies (and non-nonnies) - if Ryou had to earn his right to interact with each of the lions, what do you think would be each lion’s ‘eh, I guess this one is okay’ point?  Tell me stories!

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_FFFFF I keep seeing how Ryou sings to his machines but can we talk about WHAT and HOW he sings? Like, is it usually pop? Metal? Disney? Loud as ever living hell or soft as an angel? Did he get Once Upon a December or God Help The Outcasts stuck in Black's head for about a week, making Shiro question just how mentally okay his baby bro is?_

 

ah, man, I had not given much thought as to _what_ Ryou sings to his machines.  Well, I think we can all safely agree that [Danger Zone](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FyK0P1Bk8Cx4&t=YWRhYWNjYzExNGY2NDdkZTFjNWJkMTFmODZjZjEyOWRmMTQzMDVmMSxOVzJLcEl3WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161023541382%2Ffffff-i-keep-seeing-how-ryou-sings-to-his-machines&m=1) is the obvious and most common choice, complete with ‘wrarw wrarw wrarw’ sounds for the guitar parts.  Other than that, I do like to think Ryou’s music taste is pretty eclectic, probably much more so than Taka’s and he’ll not only listen to just about any channel on the player or radio but already be able to sing along with several of the songs that will come on regularly.  I do _love_ the idea of him knowing Disney and other animated movie songs and enjoying singing those without shame (possibly with complete enjoyment for the lack of shame) as any other song he’ll sing.  Chances are very high that he’s got specific songs for each piece he works on and while some songs overlap a lot of them are only sung to and for one machine and never any other.   For instance the Black lion gets [Everything Black](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Flcg6wekmCRA&t=OGViODdhMDEyNDkyOGQ4Mzk4ODNlNmYxZWFiYWRmNTA2NDUxODYyYSxOVzJLcEl3WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161023541382%2Ffffff-i-keep-seeing-how-ryou-sings-to-his-machines&m=1), the castle probably is the one that gets [Once Upon a December](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2Fr1zamKoUREI&t=NTA0OGVjYzU5OWE4ZTcxMWM3ODA4MWYzN2E3ZTA2MWNhZGY0MTMzZixOVzJLcEl3WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161023541382%2Ffffff-i-keep-seeing-how-ryou-sings-to-his-machines&m=1).  And watch out  - because that’s perfect, nonnie, so we’re going to have to run with this one.  Once Ryou figures out that the lions can get earworms and share with their pilots, its allllll over.  _Every_ paladin in the place is going to get a rendition of [The Lion Sleeps Tonight](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2F_LBmUwi6mEo&t=ZDE5Y2E5ZTVmMDYwOWEyMzYzOWM3YmMwM2Q1OTA4MzkxYjRlMDUxNSxOVzJLcEl3WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161023541382%2Ffffff-i-keep-seeing-how-ryou-sings-to-his-machines&m=1) in their head.  I also think when one of his machines gets damaged, Ryou sings lullabies and children’s songs to them as he works.  (Black learns several crooning Japanese lullabies the twins used to have sung to them when they were children).  Ryou may not even always be aware of the fact he’s singing, just another way to connect with whatever he’s working with and usually its a quiet kind of thing unless its a song that really needs loud jamming or he thinks they both need the boost to work through something.

We’ve all heard Josh Keaton’s voice and know he can sing.  I think Ryou and Shiro are both fairly decent singers considering they’re untrained but Ryou’s the one that isn’t afraid (or ashamed) to go _way_ beyond his safe levels and will happily pitch his voice far beyond how high he should if the song requires it.  Both brothers, if left on their own however, put in the sound effects and guitar and drum sounds with their own noises.  Blam. Blam blam!

Also, special bonus, you can always tell when Ryou’s working with his students or former students.  They tend to harmonize almost without thinking about it when he starts to sing.

And yes, Shiro will as well, if he’s in the room and relaxed enough (though he’s a bit more reserved about doing it in front of others).

double bonus: even if he can’t work on Red, once he discovers the earwigs you’d better believe Ryou is going to teach the Red lion [Taylor Swift’s Red ](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutu.be%2FgW_LaqKudLY&t=M2M1NjE3ZTBkNTFkM2M2MTY5ZTU2MmM3NzZkMzJiYTE5YzQ4NDJmNixOVzJLcEl3WQ%3D%3D&b=t%3APtu3tQYJ7LKr-WL36nht6g&p=https%3A%2F%2Fheadspacedad.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F161023541382%2Ffffff-i-keep-seeing-how-ryou-sings-to-his-machines&m=1)song.  Complete with the rr-rr-rr-red part.  Ryou’s merciless with Keith I suspect

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_this is like the 5th time i've thought of muck magnet ryou being able to fly the lions. like, there was a "who can pilot which lion" pic that theoretically points out that lance, being master of adapting, could pilot all the lions, where as allura wouldn't be able to bond with the red and green lions because she wouldn't want to take risks and i keep thinking that's it's possible but ryou wouldn't take that spot from anyone and that attitude is why it's possible._

Ryou as a lion pilot is an interesting idea.  Since its apparently they can play musical chairs now whose to say he couldn’t step in and pilot one if one of the paladins was incapacitated for some reason?  It would be interesting to see what everyone speculated which lion he’d be a good fit for.  Yellow?  Yellow’s an easy one for Ryou because he is about stabilizing and protecting the others, about being the base that fits so the others can build on it.  Blue?  Blue seems pretty accepting of everyone and Ryou is fluid enough and adaptable enough as well.  Red, well, Ryou does have hot headed tendencies, leads with his heart and instinct a great deal and also tends to put the team (and his leader) first.  Green is natural curiosity which suits Ryou with his obsessive need to take everything apart and find out why.  And Black - Black is the only one I’d see giving him issues in a full stop and that’s because 1. Ryou would never be able to sit in his brother’s seat without feeling like a complete imposter and substitute and 2. he’s not a leader and has no desire to be a leader. Ryou is support and back up, ground crew, and he knows it and thrives in that environment.  So I suspect Black might move for him if Taka was in trouble and they were both in sync on a rescue but that is about the only time.  That said, I don’t think it would simply be a matter of Ryou stepping up, the lion opening its mouth and off they go for any of them.  I think, after a certain amount of time, of Ryou being with their paladins and working on them himself with their paladins there, the lions might come to trust him.  But they all have their hearts set on other people and Ryou’s really not one to like filling a spot that’s not his.  He probably grew up with a certain amount of expectation - his brother was the golden child and Ryou, especially looking like him, was probably expected, by teachers and even classmates, to act like Taka.  And Ryou’s _not_ Taka.  So growing up he probably not only found ways to show that right off the bat but his mind set resisting it probably developed pretty strongly too.  _Any_ lion Ryou stepped into the cockpit of to fly would feel, to him, as if he were being expected to fill a place that’s not his, once again, and he’s had twenty-five years of heavy resisting and building his own persona off of _not_ doing that.  it might work, temporarily, if he and the lion viewed him as a spare part, the spare tire so to speak that’s necessary until you can get a real tire, but Ryou’s not a pilot even if he can fly and he’s not a paladin and he’s very solid in his assurance about that.  Red might resist him because he won’t give himself wholly over to it, Blue might because he honestly doesn’t want to be there, Green might because there really is no connection, at all, to nature in him, Yellow might because - well, Yellow is Hunk’s boy and Ryou would feel hella awkward driving his favorite student’s car so to speak.  Ryou might, in some ways, be ideal for a lion or lions with his spare part adaptable, do whatever it takes to support the team mentality - but there’s also a lot of him that’s ground bound because its his choice and he fits there instead as well as mental blocks that could potentially keep him from bonding with any of the lions beyond ‘mechanic that can’t hit the high notes on his songs but tries his damnest anyway while he’s cleaning out the cogs inside even my super alien nano-cleaners never seem to find to get to’.


	5. Ryou and Family

_anonymous  asked:_

_OOH, going with the idea that Shiro(and thus Ryou) are Japanese American, what if their mom is batman levels of rich, strong, and smart, and almost never raises her voice while their dad is a small town boy who dorked his way into the Galaxy Garrison as a doctor and has a god-given vocal ability that he's all but shy to share? Not too sure if they would raise their little angels in Japan or in America, but thinking somewhere between, like, first few years in Japan, then move, or vice versa._

 

okay, I want to start this right off by saying I think everyone should come up with their own headcanons and run amok with them in regards to the paladins (and company) and their past because, at this point, every headcanon is just as valid as any other and its fun to explore how different angles of their past can weave into who we’re presented with in the show.  I love reading the different backstories everyone’s come up with and the different versions of them people play around with.  I would much rather we all paint different pictures and share them than pick one and not stray from it.  That said, if anyone likes anything I write and want to run with it, I never co-opt headcanons, please do take what you like, ditch what you don’t, twist it all around to suit you and run wild with it.  Sharing paints is so much more fun to me than not.

As far as canon goes we’ve got that Shiro is Japanese decent and that his full name is Shirogane Takashi, though it’s usually written with the family name last when we see it in canon (both in the TV announcement and in the ‘from the desk of’ Garrison letter for the VA both of which I’m going to treat as canon).  Whether this is because its the way he writes it naturally or its just written that way for ease in American publications we don’t know (I think we’ve mostly all assumed the Garrison is located in America somewhere but I don’t remember if we ever had any confirmation in canon or from the writers so feel free to let me know.  I’m going to go on the ‘Garrison is in America’ headcanon for now).  Anyway, that’s our only canon.

(putting in a cut here because this got long and no one’s dash deserves that)

Now, I did RP for Shiro for quite some time over on Dreamwidth and so I had a whole backstory for him.  Basically I’d headcanoned him an only child in a very stable, loving and traditional family in Japan and that he moved to the Garrison when he was accepted to the school and pretty much adapted to living in America.  Family-wise, well, I’d just gotten done reading the really interesting book _Geisha of Gion_ by Mineko Iwasaki and got Ideas.  So - Shiro’s fraternal grandmother was a retired geisha who had known a slight amount of fame in her career and had married one of Japan’s notable poets.  She was bubbly and a little sly, very aware of appearances and just as aware of how to manipulate them, a friendly person who knew how to set others at ease and enjoyed company.  His grandfather was much more restrained, very strongly traditional, didn’t show a great deal of emotion but completely fair and even handed.  His study was off limits unless he invited you in, he had a koi pond outside it he was obsessive with and he was often touring for lectures as he grew older, a sharp minded, sharp witted, incisive man who was, very stoically, chest-bustingly proud of his family.  His grandfather died while Shiro was enrolled at the Garrison.  Between them they had one son, Shiro’s father, who, dealing with two very powerful personalities on opposite ends of the spectrum, managed to fall into the middle.  The family lives in one house because he never moved out and his parents never expected him to.  Quiet and calm, very slow to anger, gentle and aware of tradition, but also how tradition was changing, he ended up becoming a college professor and was very well loved by his students because he spent time on them and deeply invested into them and their progress.  In fact, Shiro’s mother was one of his father’s students, and her very quiet crush eventually developed into a romance after she’d graduated but very quietly and stubbornly kept visiting him despite that.  Of all of them Shiro’s mother is the quietest and most subdued of the family but that’s actually a kind thing considering how strong the rest of the family is with their personalities.  She’s the one that always had the soft word that could fix an entire morning going wrong and a knack with just knowing what needed to be done and doing it before anyone else realized what was going on.  She is also the one with the knack for, if something blocks her one route, subtly coming at it sideways until she finds her way through the block.  Shiro gets his ability to strategize from his grandfather and father but his ability to strategize what’s best for the people involved over what’s best for the situation and knowing there’s sometimes a difference is entirely from his mother.  He was also, in my RP verse, an only child and grew up completely supported by his family but with a lot of pressure to live up to the potential they all thought he had.  His acceptance to the Garrison didn’t surprise any of his family but they didn’t exactly understand why he’d aimed for that as opposed to a different career either.  Shiro is the only one in his family with a heart that’s always been lost amoung the stars and its just one of those things his family doesn’t understand but accepts and supports even if they wonder why he feels that way.  The same with his decision to advance into a space explorer career.  They don’t get it.  They support it but they really don’t understand it or why he’s driven that direction so completely.  Running into Matt, whose entire family was space orientated, was a shock to Shiro.  He doesn’t go home much.  Not because he’s not welcome or because he doesn’t love being home but because his life is too busy for much free time and, honestly, his life isn’t _there_ any more.  On the flip side, his family doesn’t come out and visit him where he lives either.  They did for his graduation and his grandmother and mother, his grandmother’s idea, came out to visit for a week so he could show them around (of course everyone he knew fell in love with both of them and yes, his grandmother flirted beautifully with all his professors and never meant a thing by it) but the family is very aware that he’s got his own life and they’re content, for the most part, to trust him to lead it.  (His mother wants grandchildren, she misses having someone to snuggle and dote on and cuddle since she felt it was proper to stop that once a child enters school and so its been a long time and she misses it.  She’s never actually said anything about that however, though yes, her son is aware his mother has Future Goals in that area)  For the most part, his family, loves and supports and doesn’t really understand their golden son they think the entire world of.  His ‘death’ hit them all very hard, his mother most of all, and the fact that they never got a body to perform a proper funeral for is a huge raw spot in all of their hearts but they accept it as a price they have to pay as well.  That was a choice he made, to go do dangerous things and risk his life, and they respected that choice even if they didn’t understand it.  The whole Voltron, defending the universe thing?  When/if they find out - not really going to phase them.  Not because its not amazing or mind blowing or, literally, out of this world but more because its something that doesn’t quite penetrate all the way in to hear about it.  It’s a big thing, an important thing, good for him taking that very big responsibility - but in a way they’ve, on the whole, already accepted that his heart goes in directions they don’t quite understand the tug of and ‘defender of the universe’ just kind of slots down under the ‘space explorer’ umbrella.  They get it - but they don’t _get it_.  His grandmother is probably closest to understanding it because, space, exploration, stars she doesn’t feel the tug on - but she became a geisha, and rose to her position in the ranking, because she always felt the drive of ‘something more’ out there and she understand the need to chase it no matter the cost. Shiro understands the way his family feels, accepts it but in a way it makes his little family of friends who do _get it_ , that much more precious and deeply heart tied inside of him.

Notice I called him Shiro that whole time?  Because the Shiroganes we talk about _here_ don’t fit that.  The grandfather and the grandmother I can kind of see not changing much but the way the twins are together, the emotions that Ryou lets out and the way he reacts to things make me suspect that mom and dad weren’t exactly the mold I’d originally conceived when I was writing Shiro as an only child.  I still don’t, personally, get the feeling when I write the twins, and Ryou, that they’re from a Garrison family.  To me they seem very first generation in that. (though honestly I was writing with a Shiro a while back with a different character I RP who _did_ use the Garrison family backstory and they were so good with it!)  I honestly think I would need to write more involving their family with Ryou and the Taka we talk about here before I got a feel for what their mother and father were, to me, and where their homelife was, in Japan or moved to America long before the Garrison. (frankly any excuse to write their fraternal grandmother is a lovely one)  And honestly, anon, you are spot on because someone in their family _must_ have that beautiful voice the boys inherited and _I never thought of that angle until just now thanks to you!_

So basically what I’m saying is - I am flat out open to just about every headcanon for the twins childhood and parents because what I did have for Shiro needs some serious revamping for Taka and Ryou.  So this is a call out - anyone that wants to send me headcanon or add to this post with theirs - yes, please!


	6. Taking Care of Ryou

_[panickypaladin](http://panickypaladin.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_While we are on the subject of taking care of Ryou! Pidge is the one that find him soothing music when he needs to relax and faster harder music when he needs to work. Just something to break the engine noises all day long. And ear protection for the noisy environment. Even if Altean tech is much quieter than earth tech._

 

awwww.  You know, I’m really loving how everyone’s kicking in the different ways that different team members could take care of Ryou.  I almost feel as if in some ways they take out all the things they can’t find to do for Taka on Ryou.  Taka’s team leader and he’s there for them but I don’t think he often - I hesitate to say ‘lets them’ but there’s a certain ‘I’ve got this’ that he projects.  I think in some ways it makes the team less free about just going in and pampering him and in other ways… in other ways I think its important on some levels for Taka to be believed when he says ‘I’ve got this’ because, for so long, he hadn’t been able to claim that, during his captivity.  So much of the way he was treated relied on others to take care of him (and not in a good or gentle or healthy way but ‘I literally don’t get food unless someone else remembers to feed me’).  He needs to team to believe in him and he needs to team to, even knowing he’s damaged, still believe he really can pull off the amazing (which he can but I’m willing to bet blood to money that _one_ of the reasons he can is because the others believe he can and he can’t let that belief down).

And then there’s Ryou.  And he’s much less complicated when it comes to The Care and Feeding of a Shirogane.  He’s still in a - sort of - position of authority, though its less chain-of-command and more ‘my workspace, my rules’.  He’s part of the group but he’s, in a way, one half-step removed.  He’s much more likely to be concerned with why that one cell on the engine glows a different shade of blue than all the others than great universe changing problems (he’s aware, but seriously, the universe will keep going but that’s prussian, not cyan, and if it blows up the problem is going to be much more immediate).  And, honestly, he’s much more straightforward about his needs too.  And what he’s feeling.  So, if the team can’t exactly get away with piling the care onto Shiro  well, Ryou gets the overflow.  

Which isn’t to say that they don’t also find ways to take care of Taka (Ryou may actually know some tricks to that he shares to make it easier) and they’re also a good group of kids who would naturally want to help out others - but I suspect at least some of the care Ryou gets is a bit because he’s not Taka but its kind of like taking care of Taka all the same.

And, in a way, to take care of Ryou IS to take care of Taka.  

New music tracks for him to listen to so he’ll stop singing The Lion Sleeps Tonight to your lion as he putters around in their hanger being one of them.


	7. Ryou AUs

 

 

[ ](https://headspacedad.tumblr.com/image/161815793227)

you know, nonnie, I would like you to change your title to smartass please.  I want you to do this 1. because i love these ideas and they’re very clever.  And 2. because, in my family ‘smartass’ is just about the highest compliment you can give another family member (usually said with a snort and head shake).  We don’t use it for snark, we use it to praise super clever moments of ‘you got me’.  And both of these ideas deserve that kind of credit.

First off, Ryou as fire makes so much sense because 1. electric and 2. toasting people’s asses would make him happy and I have a hard time denying him that opportunity.  Also - I like the ‘don’t let your flame die’ for Ryou because daaaamn.  Just - damn does that hit home. 

Also being Taka’s warmth and pilot light makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

I have not heard the idea of Taka being an Earth bender before.  I think everyone pretty much goes with Air given his ‘Guardian of - ‘ association in VLD.  And I like the Air idea.  But, you know, I’m really digging the Earth bender idea!  There’s so many ‘earthy’ ingredients you could see in him.  Like the more up close and personal hands on fighting, the habit of shielding others, hell - even the metal arm.  Got to admit, I could be sold on that idea.  And dang, would I love to see him using the metal cables to get around.  I like the time period you chose too.  All right, smartass anon, you’ve got my full attention.  Got any more?

And oh my goodness!  I LOVE the idea of Ryou being support because he only uses his powers to help him build things.  That - is so very Ryou.  Look he’ll kick bad guy ass if he needs to but he is right in the middle of an engine upgrade atm and that’s really more Taka’s deal.  Here bro, he upgraded your armor while you were eating lunch.  But I really love the idea of Taka relying on the mundane or at least refusing to rely on his powers to the exclusion of common sense, observation, strategy, using the environment, etc.  Maybe in the missing year he had his powers shut down.  Maybe he just knows that simple, taken for granted and overlooked things can tip the balance.  I like teh idea of both twins having amazing power, and really only using it when necessary (or in Ryou’s case, when that heavy thing needs to be there and it needs to be there now).

 

anonymous asked:

My dumbass has been promoted. This smartass thinks that when Korra, SPOILER, loses her connection to all her past lives, somehow that connection goes to the twins and they become accidental Avatars, making Taka a rightful airbender. These two are humble and keep it lowkey...until some plot convenience happens and they meet Korra and it's all a clusterfuck.

 

ah, welcome back, smartass anon.  I’m glad to see your promotion.   Much better.  As for the LoK part, you know - I usually try to be careful about overblowing characters.  I like to spread the amazing pieces out over a group instead of giving them all to just one character and I like sewing in plenty of awkward/mundane facets to each character too.  So I’d usually side-slide on giving Avatar powers to anyone but Korra 

**_BUT_ **

But the idea of two people having to share being the Avatar, and specifically Ryou and Taka who work so well together and yet would have super hard times learning to control/work with such extremely different aspects of the Avatar’s powers is absolutely fascinating!  The problems Ryou would have adjusting to it would be entirely different from the problems Taka would have and then factoring in the fact its a split between them instead of in just one body - there are all kinds of really delicious possibilities a writer could explore and so many different angles they could come in at.  Do the twins need each other to achieve Avatar state and if so, how close or far apart? is touch involved? do their minds mesh?  And what about their own different personalities and how they deal with it, not to mention suddenly having abilities in other elements they didn’t before/struggling to master elements they didn’t have to before and which twin favors which and how different are their methods of learning - not to mention which elements do they bond closest with and which ones do they use most (and how badly does Ryou run amok mixing the elements in his attacks?)  Taka realizing he can pull water out of anything - and then electrocute through it.  Ryou being Ryou and seeing if he can heat or pressurize or spin water fast enough to explode.  How they deal with being the new Avatar (or how Taka deals with it while Ryou pretends not to be).  And then, of course, how they work with Korra on restoring the balance and what it might cost them both to give her back her status (not to mention yeah, what a full on but well meaning clusterfuck those three would make of a situation like this -because oh good LORD! poor Taka trying to handle Ryou AND Korra).  I’m in, smartass anon!  I’m full on in on this idea!  So much crazy potential you’ve got here and so many different ways it could go.  Talk about a fun (and potentially heart-breaking) idea!


	8. Ryou and Being a Twin

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryou telling the story of how he basically went around the universe asking "have you seen my brother?" and got stories of the Black Paladin and/or the Champion in return....AKA How To Make Takashi Shirogane More Protective Than He Already Is, an epic._

 

oh wow, nonnie.  What a can of worms to open up, isn’t it?  Which isn’t me complaining.  So much of that would depend on whether Ryou made it to Pluto before the ship went past or not and whether he figured out that his twin wasn’t just a dead body cooking in cosmic radiation in his space suit but instead had been taken by aliens.  And lets not forget that, not probably but possible, there was something that indicated Taka’’was ON the ship that made it back to Earth and if Ryou found it, and couldn’t at that point turn the ship around, here he is, finally in outerspace to go find his brother and his brother was back on Earth!  So you’ve got At Least three different scenarios and I think three very different reactions and then you’ve got Ryou IN outerspace and dealing with aliens and - this dude looks EXACTLY like the Champion everyone’s been watching on TV for a year’s time (or holoscreen or news reels or whatever alien culture does).  And if Taka didn’t know his brother had been abducted by aliens before, he’d sure as hell figure it out quickly now.  And is it safer for him to play along with it when they call him Champion or does it get him in more trouble and what if he has to back it up because someone comes at him with something to prove and oh, nonnie, what a huge mess almost no matter what happens or how it goes. (which is, of course, so much of the fun, enjoying the mess).  By the time he tracks Taka down or stumbles across him or vise-versa, Ryou’s got an entirely new, completely crash course view on just how messed up this universe is and What The Hell did you do to my brother when you dragged him out here?  And Taka - poor Taka.  He missed his brother on Earth, though it was going to be forever until he saw him again, IF he saw him again, and now here he is and every story he tells, laughing it off, or with that soft, hurt look hooked at the edge of his lips just reminds Taka that he wasn’t there and his brother had to alien all alone.

And what happens the first time they both go somewhere the Champion is recognized?  What happens the first time they’re standing together and an alien mistakes RYOU for the Champion?

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Twingane reunion idea: Ryou runs and jumps on Shiro, practically tackling him but Shiro gracefully redirects most of the impact into a spin hug but they still end up falling onto the floor as a crying, laughing, cuddly mess. Ryou is surprised to see Taka's scar in person while Taka is more worried about the bags under Ryou's eyes, prompting a rip-off Rupphire moment of "Who cares!?" "I do!" Cue more hugging/crying/laughing that settles into a peaceful nap._

_I know, i don’t usually put these out so early but its my birthday today and we’re doing bday things most of the day so ya’ll get Ryou thoughts early today;)_

 

awww, nonnie.  Do our boys deserve some happy or what?  This makes me so warm inside.  They really do need that happy reunion and some time to heal.  You got me thinking though -

Taka and Ryou are physical twins so that means their body type is the same.  But Taka’s been out in the Arena for a year now and he has definitely got some bulk on Ryou by this point.  How much really depends on how well Ryou has been taking care of himself since his twin went lost on him and whether the Shiroganes use exercise to burn off emotions or not but still - Taka’s noticeably bigger.  And Ryou teases him a little about it and it hurts when he puts two and two together and figures out why but mostly its just his brother and the scar and the white hair and the arm and the bulk make him mad that someone did that to his twin but also are just a part of Taka now and he absorbs that.  But one day he comes to his brother and he’s just like ‘teach me to train the way you do’.  Because Taka’s stronger and faster but its not that. And its not that he needs to compete.  It’s not even that he feels like he needs to catch up but - its a place that Taka is that Ryou isn’t.  And where Taka is Ryou needs to be.   Ryou doesn’t want to mirror him, but he does feel the need to match him.  So they still fit together, separate pieces that compliment each other’s functions.  And Ryou, especially after seeing the way the galaxy is, needs the physical piece as well again.

But yes, if we can get naps where they’ve fallen asleep on each other in a careless, casual heap I would consider myself very blessed.  Those boys deserve it.

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Twinganes sharing a bed/blanket/general sleeping space, one twin's head on the other's chest. Twinganes telling each other to "do the thing" and instinctively knowing what "the thing" each in every time. Taka telling Ryou bed time stories, spoilers, it's about the Paladins/Allura/Coran. Twingames comforting each other when one of them wakes up screaming. Stealth Twingane handholding during uncomfortable battle strategy shit. Twinganes speaking not only Japanese, but their secret twin language._

 

I honestly love the ideas of the twins having their own language but I am heavily influenced by the fact that my younger sister and I have one and its not at all intentional.  Because when you live in someone’s pocket for so much of your life, and you share so many experiences, even mundane ones, you start to develop a kind of short hand code for everything made out of movie quotes, half remembered commercials, songs, stupid misspeaking moments, tired conversations, adventures, made up stories and at least a dozen other things that, over the years, just take the place of a lot of ‘normal’ conversation.  My mom calls in ‘nattering’.  It’s not intentional and its not meant to block anyone else out its just that you seem to be the only two people that know ‘I’ll be back’ is from an old black and white Perry Mason commercial and the only proper response as they head for the door is ‘I know’ in a dramatic and deeply intoned voice.  And the thought of Ryou and Taka having just naturally evolved into it over the two plus decades of hanging out almost constantly together delights me on such a bone deep level.  It’s so connecting and personal and yet so casual and unintentionally, they just - slip into it when they’re together talking about things that aren’t Dire or Important For The Greater Good.  I’d also like to think that Keith can kind of, vaguely, follow what’s going on sometimes, at least at first simply because Shiro so often peppered his casual conversation with things without realizing it but it’s Pidge and Hunk that really, once they figure out what’s going on, learn how to study and pick apart and even respond to it because in a way they do it together themselves, but their is more engineer/tech speak.  So they get what’s going on.  Lance has a huge family of his own and if they’re as close knit as indicated his whole family probably does it to an extent too so even if he doesn’t get what the conversation is currently about it just makes him feel kind of warm and fuzzy because it reminds him of home.  Allura is a little annoyed because they’re not being clear but since they only do it when they’re talking to each other about stupid stuff its not important enough to get honestly upset about and she kind of envies them since she never had a sibling.  And Coran - hell, half the time Coran is talking about things and using animals, etc. that he _knows_ the team isn’t going to understand so for him its actually kind of fun and he likes to insert his own, completely unrelated phrases into the conversation just for the lark of it.

And I really derailed there, nonnie, sorry.  But I am in love with the idea and support it completely.  As for sharing a bed, especially at first, I could see it.  They’ve both been through a lot and thought they’d lost the other one so physical touch is important and reassuring.  But they’re both pretty big guys and those beds are pretty narrow looking.  And they both probably move or get hot and don’t agree on blanket coverage or whatever so it probably didn’t last long.  I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they bunked up in the same room though, even if Ryou had to sleep on the floor (and suddenly I’m having Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters flashbacks) until someone found him a bed or them a room with two beds.  Bonus is being there for each other when one wakes up with nightmares and either the other wakes up too or else its just reassuring to look over and see them there.  I will add to it and say I like the idea that you can really tell when something is bothering one or both of them because they won’t puppy pile in a bed but _that’s_ when you find them asleep leaning against each other in uncomfortable looking positions on couches or against a wall or somewhere else odd and out of the way.  Even if Ryou has to adjust to the fact his twin snores now.

I can see touch being important to them too.  Shiro’s got a habit in the show of shoulder and back pats for instance.  I think around the others they tend to kept it pretty contained - they probably grew up with people thinking, just because they were twins, that they would automatically be attached at the hip so they downplay it in ‘public’ but touch is important between them and its probably not unusual, in high stress situations where they can’t go do something active and they’re not necessary to lead or emote for others, to find them next to each other, shoulders touching, a knuckle tap to the back of a hand, a shoulder bump on the way past.  The more tired they are the more leany they get.  Hugs, especially when leaving on missions.  Back and shoulder pats.  Back of the head wacks that don’t have any real power.  Maybe even hair ruffles, though I like the idea of that just being a Taka thing and Ryou endures and secretly loves it.  Lance, again, picks up on this most because he’s from a big effusive family and - well, he wants in on it.  So before you know it he’s getting more back pats and shoulder pats and the day Shiro actually ruffles his hair without thinking about it Lance thinks he’s died and gone to heaven because ‘I’m IN, guys!  You don’t understand what the means in sibling speak!  They’ve accepted me into their pack’.  Ryou gives the touches out easier than Shiro though.  He’s not their team leader and he’s always been the more physically relaxed of the twins anyway.  I like the idea of him ruffling Hunk or Pidge’s hair every now and then because hey - it’s been done to him all these years and now he’s finally got a little he can do it to as well (and he knows how annoying, and how good, it feels).

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_What do you think was the reaction among the Galra when/if they realize that there are two Shirogane? Like either when Ryou got rescued or later down the line, just someone seeing them side by side or in proximity to one another are realizing- Shit! There are two of them!_

 

LOL!  Double the trouble.  Seriously though, lets take this from an angle.  There are lots of alien races out there - what if some of them don’t biologically create twins ever.  Its just a completely unthought of situation.  And they’re talking to Shiro, big shiny leader of the paladins and then Ryou comes ambling down the ramp, squinting at the daylight, smeared with grease to ask Coran where they keep the spare thingamajigits.  And it takes a long moment and several ‘are you sure’ looks from the aliens but - holy shit!!  The Black Paladin can make his spirit walk around outside his body while he’s _not sleeping!_   (and dang… Black Paladin’s got kind of a scruffy looking spirit, doesn’t he?)

As for the races that do have twins - ‘wellllll, shit’.  Is probably the sane response if they’re on the other side of that fight. 

Does make you wonder if, after Taka disappeared, Ryou ever had to quick dye his forelock and put on some make up to pretend he was his brother for negotiations or anything.  And how much that would have killed everyone on the team as well as himself.  Especially since he’s probably really good at it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_How Keith learned that Shiro and Ryou were twins: He walked into the engineering department, probably lost af, saw "Shiro" and tried to talk to him only to get a wrench to the head and was about to start swinging until Shiro showed up, probably looking for Keith, and apologize for Ryou's behavior. Also the story of why Ryou disliked Keith. "Hothead little shit thinks he can just waltz in and act like he knows me? And try to hog Taka's attention? haha. NO."_

 

ngl, this ask is what made me hunt up that picture to reblog yesterday about Keith walking in and assuming Kuro was Shiro lol.  Poor Keith, scrawny teenager all unsure about things but he’s found a support in Taka that gives him some sense of stability and then he gets the same guy switching personalities and dress code on him and throwing things.  Talk about a bad couple of minutes until Taka walks in and the poor kid can double take. 

I imagine the twins get mistaken for each other a lot, even by people that know they’re twins (Ryou in full dress uniform probably loops everyone the rare times he bothers do it and if Taka unbottons his uniform jacket for any reason everyone just assumes he’s his brother).  Their friends probably just look for grease stains to double check before launching into talking to them lol.  But with all that said - neither one of them strike me as the kind of twin that plays the ‘pretend I’m my brother’ kind of thing.  I’m not sure why, but I get the impression they stick pretty tight to the ‘I’m me, he’s him, we’re us, but I’m not him’ theme. 

That said, after Kerberos - how many times did Ryou look in the mirror and see Taka looking out at him before he took down all the mirrors in his apartment?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_*sees twingane fluffy feels* ....*my brain: make them suffer* Ryou tring to spend quality bonding time with Shiro. Responsibilites get in the way. Intense argument between the twins. Cold shoulders and avoiding contact for a solid week or so. Someone decides to say enough is enough. Intervention time. Turns out it was unnecessary as the twins would have ran back into each other's arms anyway. Ryou still lowkey unsure of role in team Voltron, decides "screw it, Taka's here, nothing else matters."_

 

ah, nonnie, what’s fluff if you can’t have angst in there to balance everything out, right?  But you bring up an interesting couple of points.  Now the twins are both adults and we can headcanon (since we’re making this all up anyway) that they’re pretty used to living crammed busy lives already thanks to their time after graduation.  It’s really easy to imagine them pre-Kerberos, both with huge dark bags under their eyes looking like death warmed over and they haven’t seen each other for days thanks to separate responsibilities and prep for the mission and they just kind of - stagger into the mess hall at 3 in the morning because that’s breakfast time for both of them mentally, spot each other, get their food and kind of just sag-collapse down onto a bench together, shoulders and knees against each other, eating in utter exhausted silence before finishing, leaning about two minutes longer against each other and then both getting up and staggering back out to their next round of jobs without a single word, beyond  a grunt or two to trigger a passing of the salt and ketchup.  And everyone’s ‘you never get time together!’ and the twins just look at them like they’re confused and do a puzzled ‘but we just had breakfast together’ gesture that implies it was serious Bonding Time.  Because for them - it was.

I think you hit on something though that Ryou really would have to work his way through.  He’s used to snatched moments and busy twin - but that’s when he’s just as busy.  When he first teams up with Team Voltron, unless he brings a fleet with him or something, he’s pretty much jobless.  And I think that would be really hard for either one of the twins to deal with since they both seem the type to need a purpose.  In the castle, Ryou doesn’t have a purpose.  He sure as hell isn’t leaving while his brother is there but - he’s drifting.  And neither of the Shirogane twins does well if you let them drift.  Not to mention he’s surrounded by all these strangers that, in a sense, belong to Taka, which isn’t bad in itself but it leaves no one to belong to Ryou.  Before they both had teams and now its Taka’s team… and Ryou.  That’s an awkward odd man out no matter how you look at it and I think we all know that feeling.  No matter how much Taka tries to include him, its still - off.  On the upside of this though - we know that Ryou, at least this version of him, thrives on challenges and isn’t the kind to just sit and wait for things to change when he can go out and make them change.  Without writing it, I can only speculate but there’s a whole list of ways he can find a place for himself, from inventing new weapons for the castle he can operate during battle to finding ways to constantly tweak and up the castle’s defenses and fire power to working with the Marmorites on getting them a gosh-darned fleet together! (like dang, guys, sorry but I am not letting it go that a group that’s had century to work on things didn’t have even one single ship to send to help Voltron take down the command center when it was off line.  Not one!  They could create listening outposts hidden in pockets of space but they couldn’t come up with a single shipping barge to ram into one of Zarkon’s engine ports so it wasn’t up to Just Voltron to carve that huge thing up on its own!)  Anyway, what I’m saying is that, as determined as he is, and as clever about things as he is, Ryou would find himself a place next to his twin again if he had to invent it himself.  In the meantime though - that’s an awkward, awkward, useless, helpless feeling position to be in and I don’t think he or Taka would be happy about him being there, necessary or not.  I could not have come up with a better summary of Ryou’s response than your ‘screw it, Taka’s here, nothing else matters’.

As for them fighting?  I can easily imagine it exactly like you say. Because they seem confident enough in each other and comfortable enough that they would go toe to toe over something they both felt strongly about.  I don’t see a lot of yelling, and I really don’t see fists or hurtful words, but you’ve got two very stubborn, very determined, very sure of themselves personalities at play and unlike the entire rest of the crew, Ryou won’t back down to Taka if he feels its important enough.  Staying mad though?  I don’t know. They’re two adults who’ve been through the shit in different ways and I think they’re both very firmly aware by this point that they could lose each other in a heartbeat.  They’d need a cooling down period, and they’d still scrap against each other until they reached a compromise but - there’s nothing to make you put aside your grudge like knowing the second the other one walks out the airlock to his ship or you stay behind that you might never see them again.  They can disagree and still love each other fiercely and without holding that affection back.  Even if the hugs might include ‘brat’ and ‘pig head’ as love names for a while there.

And let’s throw one more on the fire since you brought it up.

What do you think the chances are they bunk together?  Pretty high after a year and a half of never expecting to see each other again, right?  Just falling asleep hearing the other one breathing nearby has got to be the greatest comfort in the universe after a year and a half or longer of silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Something Ryou has most likely done multiple times: Carefully taken apart a car/vehicle/other mechanical thing and organized its parts, basically telling its owner "fuck you" because they crossed him in some unredeemable way, like not pay him. /Something Shiro has most likely done multiple times: Support Ryou's brand of revenge by meticulously keeping records of that shit because no one disrespects Ryou like that and gets away with it._

 

oh, nonnie, he would be so talented at that.  Ryou strikes me as fairly chill most times so I can’t imagine what someone would do that would merit him doing that to someone (probably they messed with Shiro in some way that Shiro shrugged off but like hell is Ryou going to do the same) but I can see him sticking around afterward, leaning against a wall most likely, so that he got full credit for it and could explain exactly _why_ he’d done it in the first place, every single piece down to the separate wires all laid out in size order on a nice white sheet in the middle of the garage.  Ryou probably has eyes that burn like ice if he gets a real glare going on (I imagine Takashi’s do too but I also suspect Taka’s ‘I’m disappointed in you’ is more devastating by far than anything else he could ever do or say to someone).

I also imagine Ryou gave his instructor’s mild heart attacks the first year or so at the Garrison when he’d, yet again, evaded curfew and sneak into the motor pool to take something Very Expensive And High Tech apart and was still in the middle of it the next morning when they found him.  When he was far enough along in the course, they probably just immediately handed all their new vehicles, etc over to him right off the bat because it was easier than trying to keep them a secret.  Taka test drives the new rides, Ryou takes them apart and puts them back together better. (’what are those?’ ‘pieces I didn’t need’ ‘but… those were in the pod’s engine originally’ ‘yep.’ ‘o….. kay?’)

 

Now imagine what it does to Ryou the first time he wakes up to hear his brother screaming his way out of a nightmare from his time in Galra captivity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_headcanon that every time the twins are calling each other names, especially during petty arguments, when one of them starts to say "son of a bitch" they stop just before the "bitch" and the other looks at them with an evil smile and says "son of a what bro? go on. finish that sentence. I dare you."_

 

You know, I’m going to tangent here for a moment or two but I read somewhere that Shiro is one of the only two characters that doesn’t use the word Quiznack.  And I think that says a lot about his personality once you realize that. I also think it says a lot about how the writers are being aware of language ‘tells’ in the way each character speaks.  When I was rping Shiro I had a bit of a hard time getting his ‘voice’ down in my writing because I was so used to writing for characters that had distinctive ‘tells’.  Cloud Strife for instance, especially once he got a VA, used a lot of ‘hn’ noises in place of words and had a tendency in the original game to use contraction slang like ‘gonna’.  Minato Namikaze had a very cut way of speaking, not short sounding but very ta ta ta ta ta steady beat of words and tended to use larger or ‘proper’ ones as well as a tendency to use ‘ah’ in the place of ‘yes’.  As a writer, I usually fasten on one or two phrases that tend to stand out and encase the way a character speaks for me and I had a very hard time doing that for Shiro.  He doesn’t have a lot of tells in the way he talks, not a lot of habits or patterns or ways of phrasing things that makes it unique to just him.  ‘I’ve got you, buddy’ is close but I’m pretty sure Lance has used ‘buddy’ too.  ‘All right, listen up, Team Voltron’ is another good one but that’s hard to translate in to him asking someone to run to the store for milk for him.  Pidge has her techie way of saying things, Hunk throws ‘man’ in there when talking to people sometimes, Lance is more the way of saying things than a certain way of phrasing.  But Shiro is - Shiro.  And I had a hard time feeling as if I was capturing his voice properly when there didn’t seem to be any distinct way of his talking that made him stand out from anyone else.  Mostly its _what_ he says that makes his voice so distinct, at least to me, over _how_ he says it.  As a writer, for me at least, that always made it harder for me to assure myself I was hitting the right notes when I wrote him. Don’t get me wrong, I loved writing for him and I still love the small times I get to write him into my fic but I worry over his voice so much more than I usually do when writing another person’s character. 

Anyway, as for the twins, I’m going to go with the lack of Quiznak and say that they probably don’t swear much.  Ryou does more than Shiro but even he’s probably pretty tame.  If I was going to headcanon, I’d suggest that their grandmother drove it into their heads early on that curse words are a last resort for the uneducated who don’t know enough words to use the proper one.  I do like the idea that the rare times they do swear, its generally in Japanese.  Not because Japanese is more viscous (my understanding that Japanese swearing is pretty mild in comparison) and its not even that its in a foreign language others won’t understand so they can ‘get away with it’.  But mostly because its _personal_ to them when they swear in Japanese.

I will also suggest however that as clean as their mouths usually are, their heads probably run ‘fuck, fuck, _FUCK’_ a mile a minute in tense or really bad situations  And I will take that headcanon to my grave as being why it sounds like that’s what Shiro says when they’re training with the drones in season one and he gets hit and drops through the hole in the floor.

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Pffft, and both Twinganes are just done with the other. "Taka just take a chill pill damn no need to punch their dick" "how bout i do anyway?" / "Ryou just punch them in the face, write a passive aggressive apology and be done with it" "That's too easy, go big or go home, maKE THEM SUFFER"_

 

So I’m back from the con and yes, let’s talk the twinganes.  I think you’re completely right on this one, nonnie.  Taka, and the way I read Ryou at least, are very mellow when it comes to personal slights or insults.  Look, the more sure you are of who you are and where you belong, the less someone else taking a dig at you effects you.  Because, sure, its their opinion but you know better and the people that matter to you know better, and the people you work with know better and really - how much does one stranger’s opinion really matter (the answer being ‘not a hell of a lot’ (the answer also being ‘welcome to adulthood, this is one of the perks of it as you get older and more comfortable with yourself)).  Ryou and Taka aren’t that much older but they’ve got the bonus that they’re both top of their field and both of those fields are really some crazy competitive and advanced fields.  ‘I build space ships’ really does knock down the importance of someone that thinks Ryou cuts his hair wrong or that his tattoo (if we’re going with [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ) (which I am) is stupid or that he’s got shit taste in movies (he KNOWS he’s got AWESOME taste in movies thankyouverymuch anyway so there).  Add to that they do, in my headcanon at least, have supportive parents and grandparents and then throw on the fact that the most important person in their life, their twin, thinks they hung the moon and really, they don’t shake over a lot of the milder, subtle things that someone in their mid-twenties would still find enough to trip them.  Not that nothing ever bothers them and that little insults can’t get through their skin and that some things really DO throw them sometimes, even little things they know shouldn’t, but - they’re both in highly competitive fields.  They’ve probably had to develop a bit of a thick skin over the years against the people that would rather bite their heels than work with them.  So they’ve gotten pretty skilled at either letting it roll off their backs or acting like it has.  I think they both have surprisingly quick flashes of temper - you see it in Taka from time to time in the show, I’m thinking of the way he flared at Allura over having found out who the original Black Paladin was the way he did and how he sharp his reaction to Lubos but with both of those, if I remember right, that’s something he held back at first and waited for the right time to snap out.  Slav is another example of Taka’s quick flare anger and I think both of the twins have that even if Ryou is more likely to say something immediately while Taka is the type to hang on to it and see if he _should_ say something or not.  That said, Taka doesn’t seem to hang on to his anger for long and I suspect Ryou would have a tendency to but I like to think that a lifetime of hanging around Taka has mitigated that a little and he, sometimes grudgingly, lets the anger or offense go in fairly decent time.

Except -

Except when the offense is against the other twin.  And I think you’re right and that’s when they trade places.  Because Taka also tends to charge when he’s attacked, as shown just about every time he gets caught in a fight unexpectedly in the series and while I think that reaction was exacerbated by his time in captivity when speed and surprise really were the difference between life and death, I can’t imagine that it all popped up out of nowhere.  So I can see Taka very much being a ‘that’s it, meet me behind the Denny’s.  Now.’ over insults to his brother while Ryou - hey, if he’s going to take apart your car down past the chassis, he’s going to need time and opportunity for that.  I think the twins usually let each other fight their own battles unless they’re tag teamed in.  There’s a lot of faith in each other’s abilities and also a lot of faith that, if it gets rough, their twin _will_ tag them in for help but I don’t doubt at all that you’re right that, sometimes, they do have to talk each other down from that anger flare when they know its for their own sake. 

And it doesn’t always work.  But they can try, at various levels of actual attempt vs. just saying the words because someone needs to say them.

At least before the kidnapping and lost year.  Taka’s a lot more vulnerable now than he was then to other people’s opinions of him - and the gaps in his defenses are a lot wider and easier to guess at than they used to be.  Ryou’s been forced to kill since than as well.  You don’t do that and not change a little inside.  I suspect that he still lets Taka fight his own battles, at least to start, but there’s a lot less leeway in Ryou these days if you start prying at one of Taka’s insecurities - and its not your vehicle he’ll try to take apart down to the bone anymore either.

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Keith has a conspiracy theorist board dedicated to learning the secret of the twin speak._

 

I 110% support this.  _Some_ one’s got to translate for them sometimes and Keith’s frankly frustrated of being around them and not understanding what the hell they’re saying.  Sometimes Ryou switches the notes around on the board just to fuck with him.


	9. Ryou and Daily Life

 

[ ](https://headspacedad.tumblr.com/image/160911174677)

GASP!  _Nonnie_ , how **_could_** you forget the gloves?!  Does Ryou seem like a complete degenerate barbarian to you?!

No seriously though, I suspect that Ryou probably feels a bit naked without any gloves on.  He uses his hands so much and you know that his hands are rougher skinned and more calloused than Taka’s even after his older brother’s time fighting.  He’s probably been wearing gloves almost as long as he’s been taking sharp things apart.  Getting to wear gloves again will probably give him more a sense of normality than he’d like to admit. And yes! 110% support for him turning into an absolute grease gremlin within five minutes of discovering anything new with a motor.  Even systems that don’t run on friction and don’t need grease and yet, somehow, Ryou pushes out from under it, covered in some kind of sticky blue gelatinous substance.  I especially like your idea because it contrasts so beautifully with Hunk who I see somehow always managing to look clean and fresh even when spattered with blue gunk (it’s the hair, man.  Hunk’s beautiful, beautiful hair).  Like they both spend the day working on an old, half blown up engine and at the end of it, Ryou looks like someone dragged him backward through two swamps and half a wild hay field and Hunk has some surprisingly aesthetic grease smears across his face.  Which does beg the question, if they worked evenly on it, did Hunk magically managed to avoid all the muck - or is Ryou just a natural muck magnet the second he gets near an open engine?  Pidge may need to do research.

As for the rest of Ryou’s wardrobe, I would like to think some of his Earth wear had been salvaged but what wasn’t destroyed to the point of useless was probably sold as ‘Champion’ collectibles.  I think Ryou’s stuck sorting through a spaceship sized worth clothes closet (please help the fashion challenged boy out, Lance!  Do NOT let Coran get him into his old jumpsuits!)  I do love the idea, if not regular day wear, of Ryou at least getting some kind of space suit so he can join outside fights, do repairs out there and mostly just be In Space WITH A JETPACK!!  For that and his regular wear though, I’m going to suggest we ask [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ) for any help they’d want to donate.  I know they’ve got a lot going on so I’m not asking artwise but maybe they could give some verbal ideas to mix in with yours.  I’m afraid my opinion of fashion is usual a t-shirt and jeans.  I do agree with you however - anything that shows of Ryou’s arms would be _very_ welcome!

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_One Twingane in the kitchen spells disaster. Two Twinganes means Space Gordon Ramsey has competition and that there would be lots of singing and dancing and holy fuck the oven is on fire again oh wait there's Shiro with the fire extinguisher thank the lion goddess that these two are so good together_

 

I love how everyone’s kind of embraced the Menace That Is The Twinganes In The Kitchen.  I [made a post](http://headspacedad.tumblr.com/post/158163006037/lets-talk-about) a while back about why Taka might be such a horrifying cook and I think some of it could apply to Ryou as well.  Not so much the ‘food isn’t important’ part but very much the ‘easily distracted away from making it’ part.  I suspect, if you put the Twinganes in a kitchen together you’ve got one of two endings and its always going to be an absolute coin toss on which one you end up with.  If you’re not lucky, they’ve still managed to distract each other from what they were doing and whatever they were making is burned (and only burned if you’re lucky).  The other option is that is that the brothers keep each other interested in what’s going on and the food that comes out is - decent.  I like to think that Taka is a ‘follow the directions exactly’ kind of cook so what the recipe says is _exactly_ what you’re getting and Ryou is more of a ‘what if we add some - ?’ kind of cook who is much more likely to go with ‘what feels right’.  The only issue with that is that there is no way Ryou is anywhere near the kind of cook Hunk is and is just as likely to add garlic as nutmeg to mac and cheese with vastly different and sometimes horrifying results. 

Which Taka will still eat.

I think the only competition Gordon Ramsey would have would be not blowing a blood vessel at the utterly care-less way both of the guys approach cooking and the end results (poor Hunk dreads the times he hears singing from the kitchen because as much as seeing the twins happy makes him happy - walking into his kitchen after they’ve finished is always a nightmare no matter how much they clean up after themselves).  However I love the mental image of them, at three in the morning, both up and running on their own odd schedules, dancing around the kitchen in their socks and harmonizing while Ryou mangles cutting up… whatever that is, he licked it and didn’t die so it must be okay if its in the kitchen and Taka is worrying about how thin ‘thinly sliced’ is because he needs actual measurements dammit and yes, bless them all, Coran just takes to leaving a newly charged extinguisher right in the middle of the kitchen cabinet for moments such as these which Taka has developed stunningly good aim with.

Ryou still manages to summon flames (like the cat and the oven from the earlier post) but that’s okay.  The recipe didn’t call for it but surely ‘lightly charred’ is never a bad thing.  Right?

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Random thought: Ryou is always trying to feed someone. Taka has to clean after Ryou when they cook. What if Taka has to clean because if no one does, the kitchen looks like a war zone. Stuff is on fire, pots are overflowing, a knife flies and nearly hits Ryou in the head. YET SOMEHOW THIS BOY HAS THE DEVIL'S LUCK AND ALL THE FOOD COMES OUT A++ 100% OKAY. Hunk and Coran nearly die at the sight of an unsupervised Ryou cooking._

 

you know, of the two twins, one of them has to at least be semi-proficient in the kitchen just so they don’t both starve when left on their own.  I’ve headcanoned before that one of the reasons Taka is so terrible at cooking is because he gets distracted away from it, look even five minutes in the microwave is five minutes he could be doing other things instead of standing there staring at the timer and in five minutes there’s a lot he can get into that can distract him away from dinner.  Give Taka anything that _DOESN‘T_ turn itself off automatically like a microwave does and that’s just begging for disaster.  I would love to think that he and his twin balance each other out here and Ryou is the salvation of the younger Shirogane generation… but I’d honestly be lying if I thought Ryou was any better about not getting distracted away from things than Taka is when it comes to cooking.  Not to mention at any given time, half of their cooking appliances are probably in pieces because Ryou is in a never ending quest to improve them and - I think the Shirogane twins eat a lot of microwave food.  A lot.  Especially since, while eating itself is important and Ryou recognizes that - _**what**_ he eats … isn’t so much?  I mean, I think of the two of them Taka is the one eating Frosted Flakes out of the box and drinking milk afterward and calling it breakfast/dinner but while Ryou may be a bit better when it comes to ‘no, that only gives you a temporary sugar high, you need something that will give you energy all day and _‘OHMYGODTAKA! PUT THE MONSTER ENERGY DRINK DOWN!!’_ I don’t think that stretches to included Ryou being any kind of miracle in the kitchen.  God knows, I suspect their mother (and possibly father) tried but it just didn’t take.  So Ryou relies on protein shakes and energy bars and just kind of puts them in front of his brother at random times knowing Taka will down them without question or really even too much realization (and if you think this hasn’t led to Ryou taking advantage with the occasional horrifyingly nasty concoction just to watch his brother’s face once his taste buds register it, you’re… not thinking of the same set of twins I am).  But - yeah, I can see Ryou actually being fairly decent when he applies himself - both because he can follow instructions and because he’s good at improving with designs.  I think, the rare times he does though, you’ve nailed it on the head and the kitchen is a the ending of a horror movie afterward and Taka doesn’t even really phase at cleaning it up because that’s just the way its always been.

What I think we’re both saying and agreeing is that Hunk and Coran need to keep both Shirogane out of the kitchen area as much as possible because there will be a fire every time they don’t.  Taka’s is just because he got caught up reading an article on black holes and Ryou because - well - explosions and flame make everything better so he sees no reason to stop a good one once its going and it DOES cook the food faster.  Either way, you’re getting mac and cheese out of the deal and just be glad that’s the height of their culinary skill.  Ryou’s just might have dill or paprika or cardamom in it.

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_the coffee maker will scorch anyone who dares to take the only person who talks to them without it being some insult and actually tries to fix them without hitting it first like everyone else does_

 

The coffee maker is Ryou’s One True Love. 

Okay, but let’s be serious here for a minute.

It’s outer space.  Surrounded by alien equipment.  Living off of food goo.  I know we’re all thinking the same thing.

Ryou’s tireless and obsessive and a mechanical genius.

You _know_ the first thing that boy did once he got a decent night’s sleep was realize there was no coffee maker the next morning and sit down and build one from scratch out of sheer desperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_[noisypaintersong](https://noisypaintersong.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_Okay, so now that we're really into this whole coffee thing. How do Taka and Ryou take their coffee?_

_lol, what have we started?_   But the short answer is: any way they can have it.  I suspect even before it became a distant fond memory to them, the Shirogane twins would pretty much just guzzle whatever you put in front of them.  Long, long days, no sleep, running on fumes and spit - look, they don’t care how old it is and whether you had to cut it with a knife just give it to them in a cup at a hot temperature and they’ll down it.  It’s rocket fuel, sure, but that’s basically what they’re using it for physically anyway.

Given a choice and enough hours of sleep though?  You know, I’d like to say they take it straight up because that’s both Manly and Disgusting but… well, I think Taka likes his with milk.  Real whole milk.  He’ll experiment with flavored creamers too.  He doesn’t like the powdered stuff, keep it liquid.  The amount of warm milk he adds depends on how much comfort he needs so if he’s drinking pretty much straight up warm milk that tastes a little bit like coffee you know things are bad.  Yes, that’s right.  Taka drinks warm milk given half the chance.  Its very comforting.  He’ll add milk to his tea too if you let him.  If he’s feeling really splurgy he’ll add a single packet of sugar but most times he just wants the warm milk flavor.

Ryou can do the milk thing but it makes the drink too thick for him.  Sugar though - sugar is a different story.  Ryou likes sugar in his coffee.  Which is odd because he’s not a huge sugar freak with most of the rest of what he eats.  But if you let him he’ll add several packs of sugar.  None of that artificial sweetener stuff either.  He wants the real crystals.  Sugar cane in a bag.  Not _too_ much though.  He doesn’t want to lose the taste of the coffee.  He’s just fighting an ever running battle between trying to take the bitterness out of it and still keep the flavor without making it too sweet.  Their old apartment (and the officers lounge at the Garrison) used to be full of carefully folded over half and quarter packets of single serving sugar as Ryou chased the perfect balance.

Their grandfather, while he was alive, was quietly disgusted with them both for not sticking with green tea (which both the boys do enjoy and find very relaxing and nostalgic - though nobody can make matcha like their grandmother does).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_weird idea but ryou and how he handles kids/babies_

I think Ryou is probably surprisingly good and casual with kids.  Now, granted, when I say ‘good’ I mean everyone stays in one piece and nobody cries - much.  I don’t mean ‘good’ as in he doesn’t give their parents unintentional heart attacks.  Because Ryou treats kids just like little adults that are still figuring things out and he’s surprisingly chill with listening to their explanations and taking his time and breaking down things for them when he answers.  He’s a pretty mellow personality and the kids can get a lot of security out of knowing he’s always going to be there, steady and willing to listen (and he doesn’t take any guff.  If he’s enforcing a rule its because he thinks its an important rule so he’s not going to bend it)  He’s also surprisingly good with babies because he gets that engines need attention and have needs and babies are just little engines.  Right?  So you kept them clean and greased up and fueled and occasionally clean out the gas bubble in them and otherwise they seem pretty content just dozing in their baby sling against him while he works and really - what’s so hard about that?  Not like Ryou actually sleeps anyway.  It’s sick kids, teething babies, etc that he has problems with.  Not that he won’t try but when things are functioning according to the usual routine he’s at a bit of a loss.  And he’s a bit of a panic because the kid obviously needs something - miraculous healing - that Ryou can’t provide.  What if he doesn’t do enough, what if he does too much, what if the kid _dies!?_ (Ryou, its the sniffles.  Doesn’t matter!)  he’s good at keeping a calm face in front of the kids (because he understands kids need stability they can have faith in if things are going to hell around them) but inwardly he’s running around in circles screaming like a chicken and waiting for a ‘real’ adult to show up and take back over.

The one understood however should be that, no matter what condition you give the kid/baby to Ryou in, they’ll be returned safe and sound - and probably with grease stains on them, even if there is not obvious grease anywhere in the area including on Ryou at the time of drop off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Hi Do you have any Twingane headcanons?_

Twinganes headcanon, you say?  Well to be entirely honest with you - I tend to make things up as I go.  Characters usually flesh themselves out for me when I’m writing something specific and they simply write themselves for me.  So the headcanon I’ve got for the twins is usually based off something I’ve either already written or someone had sent me a comment about - so most of its already posted.

but

I can never resist a twingane invitation.  So let’s see.  Randomly looking around at what’s on my tabs and -

let’s talk twingane sports.

All right.  So its pretty obvious, built the way they are, that both Shiro and Ryou are athletic.  Part of it has to be natural with their body builds but a great deal of it is that they probably put a lot of work into keeping in shape.  Shiro was already pretty nicely built when he went to Kerberos and so I’m going to go with the notion that Ryou was about at the same level before he hoisted himself off into outerspace as well.  I think the twins like to train and work out together, both because its time they can spend together, which especially once they hit the end stages of their Garrison schooling and then start making serious headway into their careers after.  Finding time to just be around each other is probably a bit more of an effort than it was when they were just kids and training together lets them both get work done while still getting to be in each others vicinity.  They can chat and catch up, encourage each other, work through problems with the added help of something physical to do while they talk it through or frankly, just pretty much listen their music and do their own thing while still getting to be near each other.  The twins can still recharge around each other without having to directly interact.  It’s just knowing that someone else is there with them that helps.

Given the way Shiro fights his first round out in the Arena after his capture they probably practiced martial arts of some kind together as well.  Ryou’s spontaneous enough and Shiro’s ‘think three steps ahead’ enough that they’re probably a pretty good balance and measure for each other, though I suspect Shiro was always just a little better and his time as Champion has really knocked him further up that measuring stick as well.  Ryou’s catching up, but he only spent a month or two while Shiro spent an entire year.  They’ve both picked up new tricks and fighting styles though so there’s also more of a surprise when they spar these days.

They’re probably the only other person either of them feel comfortable going all out at as well since hurting someone else, especially one of the kids is pretty anathema to both of them.  Once Ryou gets himself outfitted with something that can block Shiro’s Galra arm its probably pretty much on, no take backs, toe to toe pushing each other to see how far the other one can go.

I’ve also seen pictures - looking at you [@studiomugen](https://tmblr.co/myj61ivLK7rqKZOAachC3kQ) of Shiro practicing archery and I think he would lend more toward the focused, centered single competition sports like that.  Shiro enjoys measuring himself against an ideal.  And he would like the tradition behind sports like kyudo as well with their historic and rooted appeal

Ryou likes team sports more.  It lets him get a lot of working parts each doing their separate thing achieving a shared goal and he tends to view it very much as a mechanical process.  He usually ends up team leader but not because he’s so good at bringing out the idealism in each teammate the way Shiro does but because he tends to pick up strengths and weaknesses quickly in others and knows how to utilize them so they work best as a whole.

Also Ryou cheats.

Ryou cheats like the devil.  He doesn’t like a rule unless he can find a way to subvert it.  Not because he’s a Rebel with (or without) a cause but because Ryou is at heart a ‘why’ kind of guy.  Why? does it have to be that way.  Why? does this work.  What happens if I do something different.  So he won’t break a rule but I can guarantee you that if there’s a way around the rule or to subvert the rule, Ryou will find it. And frankly, doing something like that is MUCH more fun if you’re doing it with a group of people that you can get into the idea as well.  Don’t play football with a team that Ryou’s running.  Just don’t.  Because there will be balls hidden under shirts and multiple people acting like they’re the ones with the ball and opponents getting tackled for no apparent reason and literally carrying of teammates down the field but other teammates.  Ryou is only interested in organized sports if he can make them unorganized.

And never - ever - give the boy a hockey stick and send him out onto the ice.

Strangely, the sport that both of them both enjoy playing as well as watching (and one that even Ryou won’t cheat at) is baseball.  And that is because it was one of the few things they could share with their very traditional Japanese grandfather growing up.  It was one of the only times they ever got to relax traditional roles and joke and hug and laugh and yell with the older man and it still has a deeply special and almost reverent place in both of their hearts and is a game they will both play purely for the fun of playing without keeping track of score or who’s on what team. 

They can also both quote, without mistakes, the ‘Who’s On First’ skit because it always, without fail, made their grandfather crack up.


	10. Ryou and the Clone

 

_[panickypaladin](http://panickypaladin.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_Dude... Ryou meeting Kuro_

 

well, color me super disappointed.  [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ) did a super cute picture of Ryou meeting Kuro for the first time and _I cannot find the link to it!_   And it was this super cute and perfect take on the whole thing too.  So while I keep looking, here, have [a link to a super adorable ( _look at them all smiling!!_ ) picture](https://theprojectava.tumblr.com/post/161215696273/the-real-broganes-kuro-takashi-ryou) she did of the three of them.

Honestly though, if we’re going with Kuro as a clone of Shiro or something of that sort, yeah, I can see Ryou being leery at first.  But I don’t really buy the ‘Kuro would be pure evil!’ theory, simply because, if he’s based off Taka there’s - too much there that would mess that up if he inherits even the least bit of personality from Taka.  If its just a walking body that reeks evil because there’s no trace of Taka’s personality that’s one thing but if we’re going on the theory that Kuro was made from Taka in more than just body, than he’s got Taka traits, no matter how twisted those are and Ryou- Ryou loves his brother.  And, probably more than anyone even Taka, understands how truly dark his brother could be if he was anyone but himself.  He’s lived with him all his life, he’s watched him develop into who he is and he’s seen all the multiple times Taka could have taken a lower route than he did and didn’t.  If you give him someone that has Taka’s traits, that striving, that determination, that selflessness - Ryou’s going to recognize his brother in there.  If Kuro has parts of Taka’s personality, Ryou’s going to reach out for that.  It’s not his brother - but its what his brother could have been - and its worth saving.  Ryou’s a fixer.  And - there are times he can’t fix Taka.  Maybe there are broken things in a Kuro he couldn’t fix either.  But like hell is he not going to try his damnest.

And really - so the guy looks like his brother?  Well… so does Ryou.  Throwing one more mirror face in isn’t really going to throw him as badly as it might if he wasn’t already a twin.  He can recognize Taka through several dozen tells physically.  Someone that looks exactly like him isn’t going to stand much of a chance of fooling him so its really easy for him to look at Kuro and see… Kuro.  Not Taka.

And Ryou’s always wanted a little brother.

If we’re going with the ‘Kuro is a split of Taka’s personality’ version… that’s going to hurt Ryou.  This is his brother here, and something happened so horrifying to him that the only way his brother could survive was to split off a piece of himself.  That version, depending on the personality it takes, might get itself decked.  Ryou probably wouldn’t hit a clone but I’m sure he’s not above hitting his brother (I doubt they often ended up physically fighting but most siblings have had their moments when it just bubbles over).  Over all though - its still his brother, even if its only a part of his brother and Taka would protect and care for that part too.  He’d just do his best to try to find a way to merge it back into Taka so the piece could become part of the whole again instead of being a broken off shoot.  Ryou’s no psychologist though so who knows how he’d even approach something like that.  Probably just with support and encouragement and ‘have your back’ so that Taka could feel safe enough to not need a splinter part of himself to protect him. (I have not studied split personalities, I have no working knowledge of them, I am not writing this from a academic or psychological standpoint.  Please take this as nothing more than fiction speculation). 

 

_[panickypaladin](http://panickypaladin.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_Now that I know you've seen it... RYOU MEETING SVEN!?_

 

Ryou meeting Sven would be - all right, it would be the coolest and possibly most dangerous thing ever.  It really depends on how the meeting happens I’d expect.  On the good side of things, Sven is definitely not Taka.  He probably moves like him to a certain extent - watching him kick Keith and nail Lance with a thrown gun was beautiful to watch - but he is more slender than Taka ever seems to have been and he probably moves like it.  And he doesn’t look exactly like Taka either.  I think those differences, which might seem mild to anyone else, would be such huge things to Ryou that there would never be much of a chance of a mix up of any kind.  That ‘threat’ out of the way - he’d probably laugh his ass off at the accent, memorize it so he could tease Taka mercilessly later - and immediately adopt Sven as a long lost cousin of some kind that he thinks is pretty cool and wants to hang out with.

Sven - poor Sven.  I don’t know that we got enough of his personality to tell for sure but hurricane Ryou might be a bit of an overwhelming experience at first.  Still, even AU there’s probably enough of Taka in there that it wouldn’t take long for he and Ryou to find something to click over and then the Bonding!  Oh, the Bonding.  Sven is getting dragged into the Voltron family whether he knows it or not.  You can never have too many Shirogane, right?

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_You know darn well Kuro would get Kuron and/or Ryou excited about something and turn them loose on Shiro to deal with- possibly after also getting buzzed on sugar and caffeine._

if we’re talking about [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ)‘s Kuro than yes.  Yes, I can completely see that.  He doesn’t even really need to get them hopped up on sugar or coffee, though it would be interesting to speculate whether the clone’s physical make up was entirely human or had some Galra bits thrown in to close up the gaps and how an earth stimulant might bounce off of that.  But just imagine how easy it would be to get Ryou wound up about something he’s naturally excited about and then let him loose on Taka (though granted, Ryou probably winds himself up pretty well on his own and Taka is probably used to Hurricane Ryou if he’s lived with it all his life).  Kuron would be a new one though because he’d get wound up about things the way Taka gets wound up about things, especially at first before he started developing his own personality and that means that Taka would have to deal with another Taka except one that doesn’t have the stops in place about doing things on the down low.  Though… if its something that gets Kuron wound up and going - who’s to say it wouldn’t do the same to Shiro and then you’d have _two_ of them feeding off each others energy and excitement.


	11. Ryou and the Aliens

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryu meeting the Voltron allies. Internal and externally screaming when exposed to Olkari technology, squeeing over Shay and Hunk's mutual cuteness and excited to meet the merfolk because he loves The Little Mermaid (he is singing Part of Your World all the way down)_

 

Can you imagine how much everyone would enjoy introducing Ryou to ‘their’ alien group?  (and why did I never notice until now how On Spot each alien race is for one element?  Or I picked up on the Olkari for instance but completely missed that Shay and co. are ‘Earth’ elemental with the Hunk/Yellow Lion tie in)  But anyway, can you imagine, each of the paladins considers one of the groups’ theirs’ and after a while its ‘oh! It’s _my_ turn to show Ryou a cool new alien group!’?

As for Ryou?  I think he’d love to get dragged around and shown everything (triple so if its one of the team and he can enjoy their enthusiasm) and he’s very much interested in culture (it’s just another branch of ‘how does this work’ to him) and seeing different ways people live but - I almost think he might be a bit disappointing if left on his own?  Not disappoint _ed_ , but disappointing in that anyone expecting enthusiasm from him beyond ‘I love what you’re showing me’ is going to find him instead up to his nose in the local recycling plant digging through machine parts or buried in the engine of some street taxi or stuck in a building because the air recycling system is on the fritz and he just _has_ to see how it works to fix it.  Ryou loves people but he’s not a people person.  He loves _his_ people.  He’s sociable, he enjoys meeting new people, he is likely to adopt a stranger that hangs around long enough into _his_ people.  But he’s machine-hearted and he’s going to tend to drift that direction if left alone with no one to tug him back.  So, while he’s going to be sociable, he’s going to be more interested in the Olkari technology than the plant powers, he’s going to be more in love with the Balmera itself than the Balmereans and he’s going to want to see how the merfolk created tech that works underwater more than he’s going to be into their local specialty foods.  _Taka_ is the space explorer in the family and Ryou has always been more than happy to let him take point so Ryou can focus on the things that really interest him.  Like how crystals can provide renewable energy or the merfolk use the way water conducts vibrations to power their satellites or whether the Olkari tech’s ability to split and still be whole is liquid based.  Ryou enjoys the extended tour of the galaxy and meeting new people, but what he’s _really_ there for is to take apart their tech.

He will always squee, and not necessarily too subtly, over Shay and Hunk’s mutual cuteness though.  Always.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Aw hell. Aw hell aw hell aw hell. Ok so Sendak is either coming back with a new arm or as a robeast, right? What if.... AWWW HELL.... What if Sendak captures Ryou? Like, Ryou went for a junk run and now he's being tortured by an evil space chinchilla. And it's being broadcasted to team voltron LIVE. Sendak stomps and breaks Ryou's arm? LIVE. Kicks him to a wall with no mercy? LIVE. Taunts Shiro by repeatedly choking Ryou within a centimeter of death? YEP THAT'S LIVE. Aw hell wtf did I unleash?_

 

granted - I still am firmly of the opinion that there is no greater use of Sendak than to have him a floating Easter egg every season, so we can all play ‘spot the Sendak’ as he drifts past a moon our heroes are landing on or by the window of a Galra cruiser while everyone is too busy paying attention to a menacing villain speech by its commander to notice.  But, if he did manage to find land at some point - he does seem the kind to hold grudges and as he showed with Lance and Shiro, he’s certainly not using someone else’s pain or a threat to them to force his opponent’s hand.  And I don’t think it would be a far stretch to think he might focus a lot of his payback attention on Shiro (though honestly Keith, Lance AND all Pidge deserve it more).   Ryou, merely human and unaltered with Galra tech, would be fair prey - if he could get his hands on him.  Because I don’t doubt for a second that Ryou’s well aware he’s a huge weak spot in the Black Paladin of Voltron’s armor and would do his damnest to keep from being accessible.  But if Sendak did get his hands on Ryou… I don’t know if he’d get out of there alive.  So I’ll add to you - because Ryou will crack snide remarks and sarcasm right to the end - until the end, when he focuses that one good eye on the camera and, with a smile, tells his brother he’ll be waiting on the other side and he’d better not show up until he’s sent the entire Galra Empire there first.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Just saw a post about siren aliens showing the paladins' greatest hope/desire.... and instantly thought of Shiro chucking his helmet at ansiren(after it got knocked off) at a siren imitating Ryou. "How could you!?" "First, I know for a FUCKING FACT my brother is on Earth. Second, if he wasn't, he'd be tackling me into an affection filled oblivion, which you clearly aren't doing."_

 

This?  I think this would be one of the surest reasons Taka would snap out of anything like that super fast.  He knows his brother probably even better than he knows himself and there must be a million and one tells that Ryou does without even thinking about it that would tip him off immediately.  And - for imitating his brother and trying to heart jerk him on such a personal and intimate level?  - oh I think Taka would do more than chuck a helmet at it.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_What would Shiro do if Haggar turned Ryou into a robeast and sent him against Voltron?_

 

pretty sure Taka would do everything in his power to rescue his brother, to the point of reckless stupidity in fact and if that meant having a robeast for a brother for the rest of their lives - well, looks like Voltron has some giant sized back up.

Ryou however?  Ryou as a robeast would be trying to find a way to make his death matter but he’d be looking for that death hard.  And if the roles were reversed… he might think that killing his brother was better than leaving him that way.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_I have no idea why but I get the feeling Ryou does a lot of casual rescuing. Like, he doesn't even have any good reason to save someone besides "it's the right thing to do". Lots of stories as a result._

 

 

you know, nonnie, I really like this idea.  The ‘casual’ part.  Because of course he’s a Shirogane so of course he’s got that core ‘this is right, this is wrong, help people whenever you can’ mentality bone deep but the ‘casual’ part - I just - its so very Ryou.

“I don’t know.  The slavers were using electric staffs and it was just really easy to override the ships sprinkler system to activate when they were turned on away from the cages”

“well - they just kind of looked like they needed a lift and I figured ‘hey - whole empty castle right there!’“

“how was _I_ supposed to know the junk I brought onboard from the asteroid about to crash into the sun was inhabited by giant hermit crabs?!”

“Poachers stole the eggs.  I stole the eggs from the poachers.  Are these guys going to mother duck follow me everywhere forever?”

 

_[panickypaladin](http://panickypaladin.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_AAAAHHH!!! RYOU MEETING SLAV!!!_

 

I know!!  It would be terrible and perfect at the same time.  Ryou strikes me as the kind who puts up with so little shit and, he’s kind but let’s face it, patience with other people beyond a normal person level is really Taka’s area of skill.  Slav and his insistence on things always having to be his way especially when, to Ryou, they just don’t make sense - and yet!  And yet when Ryou’s in his zone, and Slav’s got his groove on - you know, guy’s right!  Why ARE there so many zip lines in the Castle?  And can we take this weird machine that’s humming apart to see if his theory about the inside being bigger than the outside really is right on?  And, weirdly, maybe even Slav’s weird needs make a lot more sense to Ryou when he’s in the Zone with the guy.  the first time Ryou snaps ‘don’t step on the cracks’ to Taka, Taka thinks he’s ready to finally die because even his own brother has turned as nuts as the rest of the universe - until Ryou says something about vibrations in the metal plates messing up his evaluation of the circuits underneath and Taka can just - breathe again lol.

 

 


	12. Ryou and the Garrison

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_I think you reblogged a thing(or maybe another blog did) that provided evidence on whether or not Shiro was an instructor at the Garrison, with more evidence on the "not" side. With the headcanon of Ryou being an instructor, what if....Ryou just walked into the class and somehow he ended up teaching(maybe he walked in while in uniform and the students just assumed he was their teacher). That was a shit ton of paperwork to sort out, but Ryou still ended up being a teacher._

 

_hey nonnie!  I don’t know if I did or not (I don’t remember it and might have just thrown my two cents on the end of someone else’s post as I am wont to do).  I actually like the idea of Taka having been an instructor.  I’m not sure if he would have had the time for a full on job of it, considering I like to think he was spending a lot of time in space after graduation/pre-kerberos but I do like the idea of him as a guest instructor or speaker perhaps.  We’ve got the ‘from the desk of - ‘ paper that was given to Keaton that was Garrison official and he was shown in the same uniforms that the other instructors wore instead of in astronaut uniform like Commander Holt so I don’t think that would be a stretch, but I’m not going to hang anything on that peg for now without a bit more canon.  Ryou though - yes, I get to make up headcanons for my version of Ryou and I love the idea of him as an instructor at the Garrison (though he possibly had to take a hiatus for the construction of Little Magpie).  But - well, your idea was delicious and I couldn’t resist.  Hope you don’t mind._

* * *

“Dougal, I - “

Ryou paused.  It was the silence in the room that caught him in mid-stride, rather than any idea that anything was wrong.  He was used to hollow silence, friendly silence but this was weighted.  Heavy.  Anticipatory.  Almost - panicked?  Dark eyebrows already sinking low over, already squinting eyes, he slowly pulled his nose out of the manual he’d had it buried in and looked over the to of it.

Fifteen pairs of eyes, give or take, stared back at him and every single one of them was about the side of a fuel gasket.  Ryou looked back down at the manual, suspicious, and then back at the room in front of him.  Those fifteen pairs of eyes, give or take, stared back.  He scratched absently at the scar on the bottom of his chin and looked behind him.  Yeah.  Yeah, that was Dougal’s chicken scratch on the blackboard and he was pretty sure that was Dougal’s scuffed messenger bag he insisted made him look ‘hip’ next to the desk.  But behind the desk and in front of the blackboard was empty and the rest of the room was full and Ryou had sworn, though he did tend to get his days confused sometimes if he’d been working - which of course he had - that his friend had told him he didn’t have a class at this hour.  Well… maybe he didn’t - but there sure seemed to be a class that thought it had him.

The room stayed water soaked velvet quiet.  The gasket eyes stayed locked, in hope and panic from what he could understand of what he saw, on him.  Ryou lowered the manual and let it hang from one hand.

“So - “ he paused but no one filled in the silence.  A chair did grate against the floor as someone shifted in it.  Ryou ran his thumb over the chin scar and suggested helpfully:

“You guys are missing someone?”

“Yes!” the immediate burst of energy was like a relief valve letting off steam and a kid in the front, big guy with a distinctly ‘I’m drowning here’ look blurted it and then settled enough, though obviously still worried, to finish:  “Kim couldn’t make it to class.  He told me to let you know and he’d do whatever he needed to to make it up.”

“Right.  ‘Kay,” that… hadn’t been what Ryou had been angling for but he’d roll with it.  He gave it another shot.  “So the question is - ?”

Either ‘where’s our teacher?’ or ‘what are we doing here?’ and Ryou didn’t have an answer to either but there was something about the way those fifteen or so gasket eyes had latched on to him as if he was their last hope that made him want to at least try to figure help out.

The quiet in the room got very still and Ryou wasn’t sure if they were afraid to ask or didn’t realize what he was asking them.  They all looked young - had he ever looked so damn young? - in their brand new orangsicle uniforms that still had the creases in them from their packaging.  They had to be first years, just finished with their general training and starting to specialize. 

“Look - “

“If I’m working on a reversible engine - should I use the carnot cycle?”

It was blurted almost in panic again, this time from a girl halfway back that was tentatively shivering a hand into the air.

“Carnot is most efficient for a reversible.  Irreversible engines have max efficiency though.”  It wasn’t the question he’d expected but - hey, throw him a pitch and he could take the swing.  And they were certainly speaking his language, albeit it a very simplified and basic version of it.  “All right, look,” he hiked a hip up onto the desk’s edge and dropped an arm over his thigh.  Whatever was going on, they needed to start at the bottom if they were going to build up and Ryou didn’t even stop to question it as he dug in.  If they were going to talk engines at him, he was going to talk them back.  “Let’s start simple.  Calorific value, okay?”

For the next hour, Ryou forgot what he’d come into the room to ask Dougal about. In fact, he forgot what he’d come into the room for.  The students, engineers obviously now, fired off questions almost on top of each other, bouncing off previous answers with new theories or going in a different track entirely.  They were sharp, every one of them, snapping at information and devouring it, hungrily fitting pieces together in their heads.  They had the basics but that was only a foundation and no where near enough to fly and their questions ranged all across the board, from closed cycle gas turbines and Charles law to dual combustion cycles and the Ericsson cycle.  Ryou kept pace, breaking the answers down and linking the pieces together to explain.  It wasn’t until the next class started to filter in that any of them even realized they’d missed the bell.  And, just like that, the questions snapped off like a tap being turned off.  Ryou straightened from where he’d ended up crouched down on his heels next to one kid’s desk, using erasers to illustrate a point and the other students, that had gathered around, drifted hesitantly back.  They eyed him cautiously and he eyed them back, aware that he’d gone way off his planned course for the day.  But - it had been kind of fun…

“Okay, get out of here, don’t miss your next class.”  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the door just as Dougal came ambling in.  Chairs grated, books disappeared, notes got shoved in bags and the seventeen kids hauled ass out the door.  Except the one, the kid that had been making excuses for Kim.  He hesitated in the doorway and Ryou raised his eyebrows at him.  Kid was going to be late for his next class.  The kid tapped his index fingers together in front of him, waffled a second more and then looked up with a smile.

“Thanks, professor.  I’ve never had a class like that before and - thanks.”

And then he was gone too, almost before Ryou’s eyebrows could finish hitching their way up to his hairline.  Next to him Dougal, who had simply looked mystified and a little confused up until that point, snorted.

“Did he just call you, ‘professor’?”

“Yeah.” Ryou rolled it over in his head and liked the sound of it.  Turned his head to grin at Dougal.  “He damn well did.”

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryou, when he officially becomes a teacher and walks back to that class: Okay ya'll I got good news and bad news. Bad news is that I accidentally pulled a Catch Me If You Can on you guys when Dougal wasn't here. Good news, I got my credentials so now I can officially continue teaching, y'know, if you want me too._

 

oh, can you imagine?  I just have a mental picture of the entire first accidental lecture he had his uniform jacket fully unbuttoned, sleeves rolled up to mid-arm, black tank top underneath, still wearing his heavy ass gloves - and he shows up the next day in proper dress code -

and that last about five minutes before he’s messing with the collar and then ten minutes in the jacket’s getting unbutton.  Five more minutes and the sleeves are rolled.  Like, the students just get used to walking in to find him half out of uniform and chances are fifty fifty whether he’ll have grease on him or not (not the uniform jacket though, he takes that off to work - much to the delight of some of the cadets).

But Ryou - Ryou seems the Scotty from the original Star Trek to me.  Claims credit for any miracle of engineering that happens on his shift whether he was aiming for it and meant it to happen or not.  So does he tell the kids the first session was a mistake?  Nope.  Ryou coasts through a lot of his life not admitting to serendipitous mistakes - unless confronted.  He won’t lie.  He just won’t mention he was actually trying to make the engine stop with the ticking noise when he accidentally increased its output by twelve percent.  Do the cadets have the weirdest classes sometimes because Ryou doesn’t know what he’s doing and makes it up as he goes?  Oh hell yes.  Does he admit any of it isn’t intentional?  Nope.  Did it work?  Yes?  Than that’s the only answer you need.  Don’t ask how.  He just did it.  And his twin just rolls his eyes when Ryou tells him about it over the comm from where Taka is currently in orbit on a mission around Io and grins because - yeah, leave it to Ryou to walk into a teaching position without even realizing it until it was too late.

Ryou loves it though.  He’s surrounded by super smart kids who won’t stop asking ‘why?’ and want to take things apart (and blow them up) with him.  It’s pretty close to heaven for him.

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Someone made the observation that Garrison officers with three shouder stripes seem to be instructors. So if Shiro was a pilot instructor, was Ryou the cool engineering teacher who taught everyone how to build working crafts out of scrap? GASP what if Hunk was in his class? And Ryou is trying to be supportive despite mourning and Hunk can see how much pain his cool teacher is in and when he sees Ryou again he starts gushing about how useful Ryou's lessons were and Ryou is stunned to see Hunk?_

 

ah, man, nonnie, right in the heart!  Nonnie, you need to get together with them and throw ideas around.  Not only are they super sweet and very friendly and open but between the two of you, you could break and heal hearts at the same time with your Hunk and Ryou brainstorming.  I really do adore the idea of Ryou having more impact on the cadets than he was aware of and Hunk being his open door to a place in the castle beyond his twin just twists my heart in the best possible way. 

And let’s face it, as much as I see Shiro being the ‘you can do it.  Step by step I’ll show you how and I’ll be with you ever step of the way’ type of instructor (guest or regular), I see Ryou being the ‘okay, cool.  Everyone grab some safety goggles.  We’re going outside to blow some shit up!  Someone make sure they’ve got the infirmary on speed dial.’

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Ryou, first day of teaching: Did everyone have a healthy lunch? Yes? No? Do I need to bring out the snack cart and juice bar? Any low blood sugars? Bad day and you need to bite something? I'm serious here, stop looking at me like I'm crazy._

 

This made me laugh, nonnie.  This is great!  You’ve got my full support. 

‘All right, show of hands.  Who’s hungry or thirsty?’  Suddenly chocolate nutrition bars are flying rapid fire through the air along with bottle waters.  No one knows where he managed to pull them from.  ‘Rule one.  Always take care of yourself physically and don’t be ashamed to take a break if you need one.  If your body is distracting you, you can’t concentrate and if you make a mistake because you weren’t paying attention you could blow someone up.  Like, no - literally.  We’re working with jet fuel here and electric things that spark.  Do we need to take a bathroom break on the way to the training hanger?  Let’s take a bathroom break.  Now everyone grab a fire extinguisher and follow me!’

Hunk is horrified by the nutrition bars but weirdly suddenly feels comfortable bringing extra helpings of his latest baking experiments to class from that point on to share.

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_now you got me thinking of the twins having hilarious hijinks in russia... mostly involving bears and the fact that anything less than 10% alcoholic was considered a soft drink_

 

It is one of my fondest headcanons that you don’t work your way all the way up the ladder at the Garrison and become a top notch astronaut without having spent time with the cosmonauts in Russia and on the space station(s).  IRL our astronauts here have to learn how to speak Russian and I like to think that tradition holds.  So both Taka and Ryou speak it fluently, complete with the ability to swear viciously, and, I like to headcanon, developed a bit of a tolerance for the paint stripper they pass off as vodka.  ‘A bit of’ being the key word here but both of the boys don’t consider anything really alcoholic anymore unless you can peel paint with the fumes of it.  So what I’m saying is that yes - there were bear hijinks.  And dancing.

And that when Taka disappeared on Kerberos, it wasn’t just one continent that felt his loss personally.


	13. Ryou and Maintance

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_Shiro, most likely: When Ryou is in the zone, you leave him alone. /Someone else: But what if(insert reason here)? /Shiro: Look if you want to talk to him when he's in the zone, take a helmet because he will throw something at you and he has supernatural aim, good luck._

 

sorry, nonnie, I was off with the birthday and have only just made it back.  On that note, the new Avatar Banshee ride at Disney’s Animal Kingdom will BLOW YOUR MIND!  When it opens to the public at the end of this month everyone that can go - should.

But this!  Oh, nonnie, I have to laugh.  I do love the idea of Shiro knowing his brother’s habits so well he’s just learned to work around them without hassle but - hey, he had to learn somewhere.  Maybe he can personally attest to those crazy throwing skills Ryou’s got when someone’s trying to interrupt him out of his zone.  These days the idea of him being all casual about warning others off and them listening - or not delights me.  That’s got to be a beautiful, hysterical thing.  And Shiro just standing in the back making sure nothing goes flying out the door into the hallway.

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_A possible summary of Ryou's upgrades to the castle: Gravity-bend pocket for easy concealment along with castle-shaped particle barrier because "the bubble is inefficient" that allows up to 4x the defense at lower energy consumption and holy shit it absorbs enemy fire as power AND ups it own defense? And those little drones the Paladins have can now be operated by one with a simple voice command? WHY ARE THE LASERS BIGGER?_

 

Oh my goodness, nonnie!  The upgrades Ryou could make!  At first, sure, he’s on a seriously steep learning curve because alien tech and all but he’s determined and he’s got Coran(ic the mechanic) to learn from.  Suddenly he’s got access to tech that Earth was no where near being able to invent yet and all those super crazy ideas he had over the years, the ones that didn’t seem possible because the level of science advancement needed was way beyond anything even he could come up with, are suddenly at his fingertips.  And, sure, he’s a neophyte to all of this but on the upside - he doesn’t have any ingrained ‘that won’t work’ to have to break through so he’ll TRY the really wild ideas just because he can.  (and also, I’m apparently starting to headcanon him really enjoying making things explode so - ).  And I’m right there with you, first order of the day is to beef up that Castle and its abilities in a fight.  If he’s going to have to sit back while Taka’s out there in a lion, like HELL is he going to just SIT there.  And Ryou’s probably, especially if he’s had any adventures in space on his own before finding his brother, got some really nasty ideas for fighting dirty.

Slav though - can you imagine him with Slav?  I doubt he’s got his brother’s patience.  I mean, he has patience but not on Taka’s level of spades of it.  And yet - and yet, I like to think that Ryou zones.  Like he just gets in a groove and he goes with it and nothing else even registers or pings his radar when he’s in a zone with his work.  I actually think he and Slav would really gel that way.  Weird little guy drives him crazy sometimes but man, when they’re both working on something its almost telepathic and they both LOVE taking things apart.  Poor Coran runs across them more than once completely up to their waists in wires and Castle parts because they’ve dismantled something they’re both SURE they can make run more efficiently once they figure out how it works in the first place and they just give him blinky blank stares when he yells.

But yes, nonnie.  Oh Heck To The Yes!  Lasers ALWAYS gotta be bigger!  Always.

 

 

 

 

[  ](http://chibifoxai.tumblr.com/)

_[chibifoxai](http://chibifoxai.tumblr.com/) asked:_

_I just watched an episode of Firefly(Ariel) where as part of a plan the crew has to go and scavenge in a junkyard and the crew's engineer Kaylee complains about how she has to dig through trash instead of shopping only to get excited when she starts to find stuff the ship needs and all I can think of is Ryou. Ryou ends up getting and translating a few books/magazines about alien tech and the day the crew has to land the castle and hide on a junkyard moon is Ryou Shirogane's version of Christmas._

 

First off, excellent taste.  I loved that series and Kaylee was such a gem of a character.  But oh my goodness, yes.  First off I can see Ryou learning Altean (and other languages) very much for the same reason Pidge was working on it.  There’s just too much out there that’s printed that he needs to be able to read and he wouldn’t last long against the frustration of not being able to.  He probably can’t speak a lick of it (or no more than just enough to sound like he knows the language five seconds before someone that’s native to it starts happily chatting to him and he has to hold up his hands and admit he only knows how to say ‘take me to your spare capacitor’ and ‘that’s a mighty nice sized engine you’ve got there’).  But he needs to read it and so he’s going to learn how to read it and he’s got the motivation to do it.  The first thing he learns in almost any language is to recognize the words ‘don’t touch’ but that’s mostly just so he knows what he now wants, suddenly, to touch.  I can see him learning enough Altean spoken to surprise and delight Allura (and maybe make her a little homesick unintentionally).  But I can see him picking up written languages really easily - they’re only a form of code after all and he loves code.  The more logical the syntax the faster he can plow through it.  And I’m going to say he already speaks and reads Japanese, English and Russian so really he’s got a pretty sound base to work off of.

But junkmoon.  Oh my LORD!!  Can  we all just take a moment to visually imagine the pure joy Ryou would get out of being ‘stuck’ on a junk moon?  Hell, he doesn’t even know what half this stuff IS but he’s bringing it ALL back to the ship so he can sort over it later on.  (let’s face it, its probably a good thing, the ship is so big and empty because Ryou is probably taking up way more room than his fair share with all the Stuff he keeps collecting).  Coran takes to simply looking over each sled Ryou brings in just to make sure he’s not accidentally (or intentionally) bringing any old warheads on board with each load.  Pidge and Hunk both disappear into the depths of ‘Ryou’s Garage’ and aren’t seen for days.  The rest of the team is both bored out of their minds and vaguely amused and Shiro takes to bringing meals down on the regular (which also serves to make sure he eats regularly as well).  The boredom vanishes when it turns out that Pidge’s little fuzzy friends live here too and have either snuck (or been smuggled) onboard and the mice can ride them. Then its hall races until its time to leave.

(Ryou and Pidge and Hunk swear up and down that they put all the fuzzies back but there are suspicious glowing cheeks in the depths and corners of Ryou’s work room he claims are just figments of the visitor’s imagination.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_anonymous  asked:_

_no seriously where the frik frak snik snak is ryou getting money is there some bartering station that let you trade stuff for money? is he a mechanic for hire?_

 

That’s a very good (and colorfully phrased) question, nonnie.  I think to start they’d have to cannibalize parts of the ship.  Or rather, not the ship itself but the things in it.  The castle is huge and completely outfitted and stocked and there is no way a group that small is going to use all of it in several lifetimes.  A great deal of it is probably just regular stuff that doesn’t have any intrinsic value beyond what a blanket would cost anywhere but I’m sure, after ten thousand years, some of that stuff is completely vanished anywhere else or at least exceedingly rare (like Coran’s talking cube).  As fun as it is to joke about Ryou just having unlimited access to anything he can get his grubby little hands on, in truth and without the joking, he probably does have to leave a lot of things he’d love to take home with him behind and just kind of wistfully sigh after a lot of things.  Once they find the equivalent of ebay however, and Ryou’s got time to go scrounging, there’s a good chance that he can find himself a very nice stash of pretty expensive stuff that Allura will let him trade off.  And, while I agree that Ryou, given half the chance has no real concept of ‘expensive’ when he hits an ‘I want’ regarding something mechanical, he could learn very quickly to become a demon at bartering simply because its a means to an end for him. 

That said, him walking into a swap shop and fixing one of their junk pieces for them just because its broken might go a long way toward getting him stuff too because I doubt the Unalu would want to owe anyone anything and Ryou can probably do a pretty good trade with his habit of fixing things at random just because he needs to figure them out.  I suspect he makes more friends and connections that way over money but yeah, he’s got a skill set that’s marketable and it makes him feel useful so its probably not hard to imagine he trades on that just as much as castle goods once he start getting good at things.  Not to mention - he’s a member of team Voltron.  There’s probably a high chance, as they get more well known, people are more likely to just give Ryou things as well.


	14. Ryou and the Bunny

_Hey I see you like rabbits! I have two myself, they’re so cute and have such big personalities. What do you think about (after the war or in an au) Shiro having a pet bun? I feel like he’d be really good with small animals, very gentle and calm, although maybe a little worried of his own strength._

_ Anonymous _

I do indeed love rabbits, hoppy anon! I lived with hamsters for over a decade and even so I wasn’t prepared for the almost Edo era layers of subtle interaction bunnies have going on. Currently I live with a little angora/lionhead named Fizz who has my heart completely. And you’re right! That’s the thing isn’t it? They have so much personality wrapped up in them - lion hearts in tiny bunny bodies. Fizz is the queen of all she sees and she expects everyone to acknowledge and respect that.

Shiro with bunny/ies is a AU/mental image close to my heart. I would love to have him end up visiting Okunoshima in Japan and getting buried under a pile of treat seeking buns with their little pointy feet. I feel like the physical experience alone would take years of stress off his life and I can only imagine how much he would laugh.

I don’t know if I see Shiro as being a voluntary pet kind of guy. In canon he’s got responsibilities even before Kerberos that take him off planet for months or years at a time and I can never quite believe the ‘after Voltron’ theories that he’d come back to Earth and settle down somewhere even as a Garrison instructor. He’s always had a hunger for the stars and exploring and I honestly can’t imagine him giving up Black, or Voltron or even being able to be in the Castle Ship or ‘out there’. So I tend to think that if Shiro ended up with a pet it would be a rescue of some sort. A creature in need he wouldn’t turn away from. So I think we can all just pause here to enjoy the mental picture of a slightly grass covered Shiro in the middle of a park somewhere, hands full of bun that someone dumped there that’s blinking at him and he’s blinking right back and they’re both wondering what the hell they’ve just gotten themselves into.

I do think Shiro’s the kind of guy that takes pet owning as a VERY big responsibility. I think it really hits home to him that these are small little lives that put all of their trust and faith in him, that have no one else to turn to, that he’s entire responsible for and so he’d be the kind of person that preps himself almost too much over it. ALL the research, finding vets ahead of time and checking their ratings extensively, worrying over which pet food is the healthiest, what kind of toys they need, what kind of medicine and supplements. He probably almost backed out when he realized the health problems a bun could have. But - its this little bun that’s been hiding under his bed since he got it home and he really wants to do right by it so he goes out and buys a ridiculous amount of things, comes back with bags and bags of different kinds of hay and water bottles and those wire squares you zip tie together and bedding and litter boxes in three sizes and pellets and treats and greenery from the local grocer and just - he’s just bought way too much, half of it the bun will never touch but he likes to be prepared okay? And when he gets home he finds out the bun has chewed through his phone chargers cord while he was out so then its MORE research and BACK to the store and its all kinds of tubing and PVC pipes and baby gates and whatnot to bunny proof his entire apartment. He spends all the rest of the day making his house bunny approved and from time to time a little nose pokes out from under his bed and chews some of the hay or drinks some of the water and by the end of it he’s’ surprised he’s actually exhausted but also by how accomplished he feels. He sleeps really well that night for the first time in forever but he remembers in the morning waking up every now and then to little noises around the room that he registered as bunny noises, and even once something that sounded like digging in his blanket that had fallen off the edge of the bed and he’s smiling without realizing it.

The next couple of days take a lot of adjustment. A bunny isn’t a dog that wants to please you or a cat that expects you to learn to do what suits it. A bunny is a little tiny lord or lady of its land and it expects you to automatically know all the polite responses. And this bunny is still pretty unsure and shy about everything. But Shiro lays on the floor and talks to it and reads while it hops closer and decides to explore him and he moves slow and talks soft - and has treats bags to shake and share - and the first time the little bun puts both paws on his thigh to stand up and look for treats he thinks his heart is going to burst it feels so huge suddenly. And that happens again the first time it runs over the top of him and wakes him up in the middle of the night - its a free range bun mostly when he’s home - or the first time it comes running over to him when he gets home from somewhere. When it binkies the first time and when it flops over near him. It takes some time but soon its coming over for head scratches and they both lose hours of time with him doing nothing but scratching it and gently stroking its ears and its shoulders and back. Shiro knows how to be slow and gentle and patient and he’s a calm influence the bun quickly learns to trust and enjoy. maybe he even coaxes it to learn some tricks and it sleeps behind the pillow next to him at night.

It’s not all easy of course. The first time Shiro has a PTSD flashback he scares the bun pretty badly and that makes him feel even worse when he finally comes out of it. But buns are resilient and all it really takes is a shake from the treat bag and some coaxing words for it to come back out and soon they’re snuggling again, it resting on his chest while he lays on the floor on his back and scratches its cheeks and talks to it. The bun never stops running when he has a flashback or a panic attack but soon it doesn’t go far and it comes back pretty quickly once he’s calmed and if he’s shaking and crying its there to head butt him until he wraps and arm over it or it can lick his face and groom his eyebrows and white hair. In a way he’s relieved because its far too fast and so he at least never has to worry about accidentally hurting it during one of his attacks (he’s very aware of his strength and speed and he’s worried since day one that he might accidentally hurt the little bun). His friends get used to picking stray hay out of his hair or off his clothes and he goes through SO MANY lint rollers with his uniforms when its shedding season. He gets used to the bunny dancing around his feet when it wants snacks and nudging him when there’s an entire hallway it could use but he’s taking up the specific space in it the bun wants to hop through and there’s the 'snuggle spot’ that if the bun hops over and sits there means he needs to stop whatever he’s doing and come over for head scratching. He learns that its rude to not nose tap a bunny when you enter the room its in or walk by it because his bun always goes out of the way to nose bop him when its moseying by. He gets inundated with bun etiquette and friends aren’t allowed to visit without abiding by the same rules. Strangely he sleeps much better now. The bunny has a very strict idea of when its time for bed and that means him too and if he’s not in bed by then it will come sit in the doorway and stare accusingly at him until he stops what he’s doing to get some sleep. It doesn’t always work but it does help him establish and stick to a regular sleep pattern better. And he still wakes up pretty often through the night but its always because of bunny noises now and he can fall back asleep reassured by those instead of alarmed. Plus it helps, even subconsciously, knowing there’s something else alive and healthy and well nearby. Maybe eventually he decides he needs to get his bunny a companion and he does SO much searching for 'just the right one’ and then THAT’S a whole adventure in learning as well getting them so they’re capable of living with each other and happy about it.

I think the real challenge would be adjusting the bun to being the kind that’s happy to travel around a lot and I think Shiro’s patient enough to work with it a little by little over time until it was actually comfortable in strange environments as long as it was in its little bunny carrier or on its leash or something. Shiro really does travel far too much and I think he’d feel beyond guilty if he was constantly having to leave the bunny behind to be bunnysat by someone else. So yeah, I think it would be a lot of work but I think Shiro would be an amazing bunny owner and have one or more very adaptable and friendly little buns. And I think they would be so very very good for him and helping him heal and find some stability and comfort.

Man, this got long but I don’t even regret it. Thanks for the ask, hoppy anon! This made my day!

 

_Hey I hope you're having a nice day! I just wanted to tell you that I love your blog so much, it was one of the first vld blogs I followed when I just got into the series and I still think it's one of the coolest blogs. Especially love your fics and hcs about the Shirogane twins and all the posts about bunnies, your idea of Shiro with a pet bun is so precious :') I've been wondering: how do you think Ryou would react to a bun as well? Also thank you so much for following me, it means a lot 💜_

 

 

[starryeyedastronaut](http://starryeyedastronaut.tumblr.com/)

oh, you are lovely!  Thank you so much!  It makes my (well I would say day but something like this can often carry me through the week) to know I’m doing good with my blog (though its hard to go wrong posting about Shiro and bunnies, its a win win combination).  Ah man, yeah I love talking about the Shirogane twins aka Twinganes as well and don’t find nearly as many excuses to as I should.  Shiro And The Bunny was a lot of fun to do, I’m super glad you enjoyed it.  All right.  Let’s see - Ryou.  Ryou and the Bun.

First I think Ryou would end up with a bun much the way his brother would.  He’s more land bound than Shiro and stationary but at the same time I think he’s less of an animal person and he knows that he gets his laser focus when he’s on a project that tends to block out everything else, like regular feeding patterns for a pet.  So I think Ryou would end up with a bunny by accident.  He finds one hiding under his speeder in the car park and its obviously someone’s pet that’s been dumped and is terrified and he can’t just leave it there because - hey, they’re in a desert and its hot and there are coyotes and big pointy birds and it might get run over or something so he decides to catch it.  The bun does not agree with being caught.  Que Ryou and forty five minutes of chasing a rabbit around a parking lot in what the bunny thinks is Great Fun right up until it gets nabbed.  So Ryou catches this bun and puts it in one of his many nearby boxes and goes back to his apartment and by the time he gets there the Rabbit has pulled a Shining and gnawed through the box to the point it can stick its whole head out.  And right about then is the minute Ryou falls in love.

Not that he admits it but he takes this little bunny upstairs and the first thing he does is realize its covered in grease so he’s got to look up how to clean a bun safely and ends up reading about oil spills in the ocean and penguins in hand knit sweaters and then his internet goes out because while he’s been distracted the bun has gotten loose and chewed through the cords under his desk to free him from the dangers of getting tangled up in those Nasty Vines in case they both have to make a quick run for it.  And - that kind of sets the stage for their entire relationship.  So he gets the bunny washed clean of engine grease and it turns out its not a black spotted bunny after all - probably a hotot with black ears and black eyeliner (its a Shirogane for sure with that on-point eyeliner) but then he’s worried because you’re not supposed to get bunnies wet so he spends the rest of the evening with it all wrapped up in a towel so it won’t catch a chill, carrying it around in the crook of his elbow while he does everything one handed.  The bun if a teen so it falls asleep on him for most of that.  Its had a rough couple of days patrolling the parking lot.  Ryou’s got a vague idea that he’s going to put the bun up on the future’s version of Craig’s list or something to find it a real home but he’s also heard horror stories about people getting free buns and small mammals to feed to their snakes and he is Not Having That for Mr. Tot.  Meanwhile Mr. Tot has woken up and decided being carried around like a king is all well and good but he’s done with that shit now and wants down.  Ryou spends the rest of the night looking up rabbit care facts on his phone and following Mr. Tot from room to room and trying to mitigate the damage.  Except tiny bunnies are alarmingly adorable when they’re being destructive and did he _really_ need that leg on the coffee table when there are three others that are perfectly good?  There’s also a lot of handy vaccing that goes on because Mr. Tot is busy leaving rabbit pellets everywhere to make sure the world knows this place is his now.  Ryou does, surprise!, have some veggies in the fridge and worries that it will mess up the rabbit’s digestive system but its the middle of the night and bunnies need to eat regularly or they develop stasis which sounds completely nightmarish in all his research so Mr. Tot gets string beans, bok choy and a couple of slices of carrot.  First thing in the morning, Ryou locks Mr. Tot in the bathroom - this leads to an Unhappy bun because tile floors are not bunny favorites and there Will Be Pee (and a chewed bath towel) to show his displeasure for Ryou to come back to and Ryou hoofs it off to the nearest pet store and stocks up on all kinds of stuff, half of which Mr. Tot will ignore.  By now Mr. Tot isn’t going anywhere and Ryou spends the rest of the day skipping all his responsibilities and building a ridiculous hutch/tunnel system for Mr. Tot while Mr. Tot ignores it all to dig holes in the carpet under the dining room table with occasional trips over to supervise Ryou’s efforts and chew test the tubes.  By the end of the day there is hay everywhere, bunny pellets everywhere, two overturned water bowls and a Very Tired bunny cashed out on one of the higher levels of the tunnel system.  Ryou falls asleep on the floor next to it and wakes up halfway through the night when the bunny jumps off and onto him to get down to the floor and go exploring.  From there its really all over.  Ryou dotes on the little bun like its his only child and the ‘only child’ returns the favor but attempting to completely run his life because obviously he wasn’t Doing It Right before Mr. Tot showed up.  Ryou ends up with better sleeping and eating patterns in very short order and even actually takes days off and spends his free time doing something other than still working (mostly).  He does take an entire week off and worries himself sick when Mr. Tot has to go in to get neutered - which is when he finds out that Mr. Tot is, in fact, a girl.  But she recovers fine and is back to her usual self in less than a day, refusing to stop jumping onto and off of things even though its doctor’s orders she’s supposed to take it easy.  Taka’s bun is a snuggler and likes to follow him around, while Ryou’s is very much a ‘come spend time with me’ thumper/grunter when she wants attention who likes doing her own thing in a way that just ‘happens’ to be near wherever Ryou is doing things.  The bunny poop gets restrained to a litter box once Mr. Tot settles down and she even gets along fairly well with Taka’s bun as long as its somewhere that she doesn’t consider ‘her’ territory.  Ryou keeps thinking about getting her a companion because buns are supposed to live in pairs but it takes quite a while because he’s worried about how long and hard he’s heard the bonding process is.  Eventually though he does find her a boyfriend who lets her walk all over him and pays her the attention she knows she deserves and Ryou names the boy Crisps and then there are two males in the house that Mr. Tot gets to boss around.  And everyone is very happy with the arrangement.

 

_Bunganes headcanons: Ryou definitely has a king costume for Mr. Tot. Takashi has joked that it should be a queen costume but Ryou insists Mr. Tot is an independent woman and Crisps can sometimes wear the cape. When Shiro disappeared, Ryou told Mr. Tot and Crisps everything he was feeling and it was a mess of ugly crying. When Ryou disappeared, Mr. Tot refused to eat until Ryou came back, Crisps got her out of that though._

_ Anonymous _

oh man, nonnie.  I fully support the idea of Mr. Tot with a king costume.  She is indeed an independent bun and sometimes lets Crisps wear the cape.  I tend to set my bunganes headcanon (is it even headcanon since I’m just speculating?) as after the boys come back from the war.  I don’t imagine Taka would take in a pet he knew he was going to have to leave regularly and for almost a year as well at least.  Not very fair to the bun.  So no ugly crying on the soft soft fabric softener smelling bun fur for Ryou, or at least not over his lost brother.  No buns getting stasis because they stopped eating.  Just damaged boys recovering from their trauma with the help of some bossy buns who know what’s best for them.


	15. Ryou and the Aftereffects

_anonymous  asked:_

_Writer Nonnie, watching Law and Order, checking this hellsite during commercials, see noisypaintersong mention that you have some details on Ryou's PTSD symptoms(and that my Ryou is sensitive, which I'm taking as well needed criticism) and I would like to learn more about them. For writing purposes. Haven't written in a while._

 

First off, I just want to say that Ryou at this point is pure speculation and we’re all contributing to him and making him up as we go.  So there is not ‘right’ way to write him.  [@bosstoaster](https://tmblr.co/mEX4VUSHSvjXkcjh0DGorGw) has him being Shiro’s clone, I swipe a lot of my ideas for him off of [@theprojectava](https://tmblr.co/mR-t8hQhcbS3CsiIxJMO9GQ)‘s pictures, another anon I get enjoys the idea of him leading a rebellion with Romelle, [@noisypaintersong](https://tmblr.co/mGe5ewPWBGBMzYqYy4l4kaA) has a lovely batverse going on.  Everyone’s got their own version of him they’re writing and no one’s is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.  We’ve got no canon for him at this point (and may never have VLD canon for him either).  So you write Ryou as you want to write Ryou.  Because he’s just as much yours as he is anyone else’s.

I personally write him a bit internally tougher.  I think Ryou is a bit harder inside than Shiro (though I also don’t think Shiro is as wilting a violet as some people like to write him as).  Ryou’s still a good guy and he’s still a kind and gentle guy but Shiro has an extra depth of empathy to him that Ryou doesn’t have and frankly doesn’t want to have.  Like - Ryou can understand where other people are coming from but Shiro can _feel_ it. Shiro would be traumatized by what he did while Ryou would be more traumatized by the physical things that happened to him and so naturally that doesn’t internationalize the way Shiro’s trauma does.  I tried to show a bit of that with my Brother’s Weight fic.  Ryou recognizes it, he’s not ashamed of it or think it makes him ‘bad’ to be that way and I think that’s important to his character as I write him.

As far as his PTSD goes, well, good question, I haven’t really explored it all that much yet and oftentimes I don’t realize something about a character until I’m writing it.  Also, full disclaimer, PTSD is different for everyone.  I’m no expert on the matter by any means and all I have to go on is what I’ve experienced, what I’ve seen and what I’ve researched and I know that is not by any means going to cover it all.   For Ryou - I would say that at least for sure he’s got insomnia.  His brain was locked in an adrenaline jag for so long that it set a groove that way and even when the threat is long gone the brain still follows the set pattern of the groove more often than it should.  It’s not jitters so much as constant active thought loops so that even when he’s exhausted his brain won’t shut down.  And with a brain like Ryou’s, which already runs a mile a minute, and a personality like his, he’s the type to just get up and get to work instead of lying there.  I would also say there’s probably a hyper awareness of his surroundings and other people in his surrounding.  Sometimes to the point that his mind, jumping through observations so fast it has to use shorthand, fills in the blanks with things that aren’t even there.  Movement from the corners of his vision, smells that aren’t there, sounds - not hallucinations because they’re gone the second his brain catches them and realizes they don’t belong but - shorthand his brain got so used to being the default that it assumes it now if it needs to fill in a space or observation in a split second before it can really process it.  His survival relied on his mind’s ability to make snap judgement calls on incoming threats and - he’s not over that.  His brain is still trying to do it.  And the less attention he’s paying or the more tired he is, the stronger his brain relies on those old shortcuts to process things.  Nightmares of course.  Flashbacks sometimes but he’s so grounded in an earth bound kind of way that I’d think they would be more split second flashes than the long ones that Taka has, there and gone - just long enough to make his stomach churn or pull the vomit to the base of his throat in physical reaction.  He’s not recovering lost memories the way Taka is so much as experiencing them again in a recognizable way.  He’s always been Taka’s anchor and stability in a way, or at least he’s always liked to think he has been - not that Taka isn’t stable on his own but when he falters Ryou is always there to be the firm shoulder to rest a hand on before he keeps going and having Taka to still do that for gives him so much of a core 'this is me’ that he can rely on against the horrible things that happened.  Ryou’s pushing Taka’s healing and needs to the front, as a way to both deal with and avoid his own.  But its his personality type to draw strength and stability from being useful and needed so in a way, that’s not the worst approach he could take.  He _does_ need to face some things that he is certainly not but being able to _be_ there for someone that needs him grounds him and tells him who he is and that he’s all right to such an extent that he actually is healing in his own way a certain amount.  He is never going to worry that he’s a monster or that he’s something the slavers made him into in the Arena the way Taka does because he _knows_ who he is and every day around Taka simply firms that resolve and knowing inside of him.  In a way, Ryou’s had to fight harder to establish himself and who he is already because he wasn’t the golden child that Taka was and so he’s been building who he is and fighting for it almost all his life already, turning aside what other people want him to be in favor of what he wants to be.  He’s not as shaken to the core as Taka is for a lot of reasons (he remembers what happened to him, he doesn’t have that painfully strong empathy, he can regret having to do it but doesn’t feel apologetic for the ‘them or me’ mentality he had to adopt to survive) but one of the strongest is he’s so built up in the core of him that ‘this is me and no one decides otherwise but me’.  Taka really does need more healing than Ryou and Ryou earns a certain amount of his own healing from any healing Taka does.  Ryou’s not okay and he’s wounded inside and traumatized and there’s shit he’s not dealing with and pushing down but there’s also a certain amount of the ugly that he’s simply just accepted, which is something Taka can’t, as purely good as he is, do.  A great deal of Taka’s ‘golden child’ relied on living up to other people’s expectations of him, which he did with flying colors.  But Ryou’s never been the golden child and he long ago learned that what people expected of him was often just to be a shadow of Taka so he’s not got that streak of living up to golden expectations inside of him that Taka does.  Ryou will never worry he’s a monster like Taka because he accepts the ugly inside of him and the hard inside of him and just works with and around it.  Mentally Ryou’s issues with PTSD are much more the physical and brain chemical aspects of it. Again, emphasis, he is _not_ okay.  And he _does_ have emotional trauma.  He _will_ wake up hearing the screams of creatures he killed in his ears and his knuckles will sometimes randomly ache and he’ll get the second flashes of the sound of cracking bone and the smell of ripped intestines when he’s simply sitting there unsuspecting and doing nothing.  His brain will hit a manic groove and run too fast so that he’ll need to work on something at almost frantic speed just to spill the energy so it doesn’t eat him.  His issues are just the kind that are easier to hide and that he can adapt to.  He shouldn’t adapt to some of it, granted, but he can and he will try.  


End file.
